Boeing Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Big company, good benefits, lots of opportunities, proud of actually making a product, and pension.

Cons

Need to account for every hour in the defense side of the business. Senior Management is never accountable for mistakes that cost the company millions of dollars, jobs, and contracts. They get to move to another job and keep their title and salary level.

Advice to Senior Management

A system to needed to track those that made bad decisions for the company and not allow them to just move to another division to make the same mistakes again.

Pros

Work life balance is good..

Cons

Slow promotion. Very "must pay your dues" type of company, doesn't matter how great you are..you must put in the time or else you won't get promoted.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote your younger employees and give better raises.

Pros

A lot of flexibility and different groups to work in. You can work in Commercial or Defense in many states in the country.

Cons

Bureacracy, low pay, incompetent management, culture is not unified- varies from site to site and program or department

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to performanace management process and motivating employees effectively

Pros

The benefits are good: free/cheap medical, pension, 100% education cost, lay back working environment. You can tag along without working too hard, just 9 to 5.

Expect a 2 to 5% raise every year as long as you don't screw up badly. Expect profit sharing as a percentage of your salary: everyone gets the same % as long as he doesn't screw up badly.

Cons

Job Security: the government is the only buyer for defense projects, if the contract is lost/over then you are out of luck and might be offered a transfer to say... New Mexico.

Lack of Passion: In defense, there are a lot of engineers who are too complacent and too unmotivated to make any kind of effort to better their work. They might have years of experiences but its years of sitting around and being complacent. Every project has 2 or 3 really excellent engineers but they eventually get tired of the rest of the deadwood.

Big company issues: Internal competition and finger pointing with other groups and sites on the same project.

Compensation: It seems like the older you are, the more you get paid. Working hard doesn't increase you salary as fast and as much as you think.

Union: Some union employees won't work a minute extra to help you. They are very hard to deal with if you want to get something done fast.

Advice to Senior Management

There's really no incentive for them at all, I think they are in the same 9 to 5 mentality as the rest of the work force. Senior management needs to have some incentives get off their butts.

Pros

Very good compensation for the internship program, and challenging work in creating products that are important to national security. Also, it was a pleasure to work with the other engineers on the team, and they treated me like I was in the group for years, even though the position was only temporary. Many of those who entered the program eventually were hired full-time once graduating at college. Plus I believe they have a tuition reimbursement program if you want to get your masters while working at the same time.

Cons

Sometimes it was difficult to identify specific tasks for the interns to do.

Advice to Senior Management

There is a need to hire more college graduates to mitigate the draining talent pool of soon-to-be retiring high-level engineers

Pros

The people are great as are the customers. Comfortable surroundings and great So Cal weather. The benefits are OK although the medical benefits have been declining.

Cons

Large bureaucracy makes it hard to get things done. Too many approvals and change board meetings required to accomplish tasks with any rapidity. Little company interest in investing in ideas unless you work in R&D. Aircraft programs are declining in Long Beach (we'll never get a new one), so the future for young folks that want to spend their careers here are about zilch. Everyone is hoping to hold on until retirement. Not exactly a bright prospect for a motivated work force. Survival of the fittest is coming soon to a cubicle near you!

Advice to Senior Management

Management talks about self-directed work teams but a culture of top down command and control management structure has removed much of the incentive to be creative. Employees wait for direction or wait for things to happen rather than making them happen themselves. The older work force (average age 54) really entrenches the old culture.

Pros

There are a vast amount of opportunites to advance in the company. They work both commerical and military so you can choose the light side or the dark side, as one co-worker put it! I enjoy everything that is military and am somewhat of a boeing legacy child, both my parents worked for McDonald Douglass which later became Boeing, so I'm really intune with all things Boeing. Other perks that were great as an intern were the pay, the benfits and the work/life balance. I was making easy money as an intern and then easily put most of it ina 401(K) that you're allowed to start once you start in the company ( i got away with 30% matching two years in a row!). And finally I was able to leave at 4pm everyday, nice!

Cons

Although the pay was good I discovered that relative to other engineering majors I made far less and still did the same work, I found this very unfair. Another issue I found with my three seperate internships was the huge age differences. Many employees at Boeing need to retire and talk to their mother for me. Theses individuals, despite their extensive experience in the company did not know some of the most basic functions or applications on the PCs. I was happy to help them ofcourse. And since there is such a gap in ages, I was constantly ruled against when making deciosin, both for a lack in experience and a lack of age.

Advice to Senior Management

I've had a good amount of managers at Boeing. During my 3 year tour of duty as they each called it, I've yet to meet a manger I didn't like. But there were downsides to each of them. I've worked in subcontract managment, cost accounting and scheudling all within IDS. In either department I felt that my managers were unwilling to give me substantial or very challenging work. The most common scenario came when I was given a new assignment. My manager belived it would take at least a week or two to complete. Given the asignment I was able to complete the task effectively and efficiently within a day if not a couple hours within the same work day. In all, I enjoyed senior managment and would just advise them to get the tanker project secure and get our $ back from the french!

Pros

For an engineer who enjoys technical challenges, the opportunites are great. The goal is normally to deliver a product that will do a better job for the customer, not just attempting to figure out how to make a component 3 cents cheaper without concern for whether or not it will do the job as well. In most areas, the input of even the newest and least experienced individual will receive a decent hearing.

Although there are some obnoxious idiots (to use a polite phrase) in management, the majority of the people in lower management are intelligent and competent people with whom it is a pleasure to work. The focus is normally where it should properly be - getting the job done, and done well. As long as the job gets done, and your function is covered during your absence, there is no problem scheduling a dental appointment or visit to the doctor during working hours, or leaving the office early to get to a function at your child's school. There may be occasions when the job happens to necessitate working well beyond 8 hours in a day, but that comes with the territory in this business, and *very* few managers attempt to game the system to obtain 50 hours work for 40 hours pay.

Cons

Since about 1990 there has been an increasing emphasis on short-term profit at the expense of long-term stability and growth. Work has been outsourced to companies that lack the capability to deliver satisfactory components or subsystems, but submit extremely low bids. Boeing staff then have to be assigned to clean up the mess so the hardware works and production gets back on schedule. However, upper management fails to learn from experience, and the whole process repeats the next time they look for a supplier, or do a Make-or-Buy decision. This can be very frustrating to observe.

Over a period longer than a year or two, a diagram of management assignments above the lower levels would look like a demonstration of Brownian motion in action. Managers spend more time working to obtain their next position than to do their assigned jobs. The general management philosophy seems to be to take some dramatic action that looks impressive and financially spectacular in the short term, and move on to another position elsewhere before it becomes obvious that the Emperor's new clothing is actually very drafty. Promising wonderful things while consciously ignoring reality appears to be the approved road to corporate advancement.

Managment guru Peter Drucker created a variety of phrases such as "Management by Objectives" to describe various approaches that management can use to effectively perform their functions. On many occasions, the best description of upper and middle management behavior at Boeing is probably a phrase that Drucker never used - "Management by Wishful Thinking".

There is a history within

Advice to Senior Management

The single most important word in this or any other business is "communication". Communication - or lack of communication - within the company can make or break the success of the organization. This seems to be recognized to some extent at upper levels, but there also seems to be an erroneous perception that communication consists of nothing more than grand, sweeping statements of corporate philosophy. There is also a fondness for - and usage of - the buzzwords du jour that is almost nauseating. Communication is much more effective when it is simple, direct, and to the point, rather than vague and seemingly evasive.

Pros

Benefits, especially the education program. They pay 100% tuition! Management is very flexible when it comes to flexing your hours to take care of personal issues. The work is usually challenging and fun. I think the pay is better when compared to other professions and comparable when looking at similar companies. But this is why I'm writing this 100 word minimum review so I can find out.

Cons

Job security in the area is low. But they do a good job if you're willing to relocate. As with any company some of the management can be hard to work with, but all in all Boeing does a good job of selecting and training managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work!

Pros

100% Tuition Reimbursement is the best around.

Cons

I thought management was a bit hypocritical when they mentioned that they would "prefer" that employees not take a vacation for the rest of the year (it was in July), yet take vacation themselves a month or two later.

Advice to Senior Management

Do not promote based on tenure.