Boeing Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

You have the opportunity to work on cool and important projects with great access to technology you'd never see otherwise. You can work on commercial aircraft, defense, and space systems all within the same company.

Cons

Huge bureaucracy. Promotions based on seniority rather than merit. I was kept out of a promotion because I was one year short of experience for the position, even though my daily responsibilities already matched the job description for the promotion I was pursuing.

There are a lot of bad software engineers at Boeing. I worked on a team of 16, and there were really only 3-5 competent contributors.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire your bad software engineers. Move more towards a meritocracy rather than rewarding based on seniority. Get rid of the pension for new employees and use the money to reward good employees and hire new ones.

Pros

Compensation and Benefits
Availability of jobs at other Boeing facilities
Annual share in profit, if Boeing does well during the year

Cons

Promotions given to non-degreed employees vs employees who have graduate degrees
'Good old boy network' is very much alive in this company
Lack of 'backbone' with management to deal with indecisive customer
Lack of recognition and apprecition given to employees who excel

Advice to Senior Management

Live the values preached to the employees...realize the customer is not always right and be wiling to push back. Look out for the company and prevent scope creep.

Pros

100% tuition reimbursement, employee incentive program, Share Value Trust (stock) award. It's one of the biggest players in the aerospace/defense industry. Management is pretty understanding when it comes to flex time, 9/80 work schedule, vacations, and working virtually (telecommuting). It's steady reliable work with steady reliable pay and benefits.

Cons

Base salary is on the lower end compared to competitors (such as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin). I suppose the generous tuition reimbursement benefit is supposed to make up for it. Promotion process and internal hiring processes are murky, never quite sure what's going on. Time in grade in your job classification seems to be a very important factor. It's a big organization with all the bureaucratic red tape you would expect.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the younger employees! We lose too much young talent due to attrition because we are stifling their professional ambitions.

Pros

Benefits, flexible schedule, ability to leverage company resources, bigger campuses have basketball court and gym

Cons

- company culture: slow, no sense of urgency, each site operates differently, boring
- management: disconnected, not motivational, no direction
- lack of communication between management

Advice to Senior Management

every year we hear the same story, "cut costs...yada yada yada"

Pros

Great benefits. Winter "break", Early career advancement.

Cons

Very slow paced, inefficiency is very visible. Lower on the aerospace payscale

Advice to Senior Management

Please make sure that this years raise is more than the inflation rate.

Pros

The work is interesting and I like the people I work with.

Cons

The biggest downside I see in the IDS division is too many layers of managment. The amount of work is up and down due to the cyclical nature of government contracts.

Advice to Senior Management

There is too much time and money spent on process improvement projects. Don't get me wrong, process need to evolve and be improved, but management is not consistent on what the goal is. If your processes are in a constant state of flux you never get the efficiency gains out of the new process.

Pros

Not much overtime. Great people. Friendly environment. Boeing can be relaxing and stressful at times, which is good because usually after a window of working really hard you have to relax. It is a job that you could quite possibly work at until you are 70 years old. They don't have to seem to have a problem with people taking time off.

Cons

Work can be tedious or boring at times. Sometimes the simplest tasks won't be handled for months, people work really slow. New hires seem to sit for months are neglected, which makes them bored and uneasy.

Advice to Senior Management

Well they switch around a lot, so stop that. Also talk to your team members everyday, even if it is just to say "hi, how are things?"

Pros

Top Notch Peers! Working with a diverse and talented work force on new and innovative projects.

Cons

Way too much Bureaucracy. Way too many Knee-Jerk reactions. Much too often, impeding processes are implemented across the board in reaction to a single error somewhere in the company. Very often, these actions are extreme over-reactions to simple situations.

Advice to Senior Management

Let people do their work. Don't have a panic attack and feel you have to intervene for every little thing that happens (and then force more bureaucracy on every other employee that has been doing a great job). This is all about Customers and Peers, Safety and Quality, NOT Power and Personal Accolades.

Pros

There are many exciting aerospace programs and many locations around the world to work. Good benefits including full tuition cost for continued education. The Technical Fellowship program recognizes experts in their field. Boeing Leadership Center. Most locations have a gym.

Cons

Management capabilities leave a lot to be desired.
Electronic 'chains' (laptops, cell phones, blackberry's) play havoc with work-life balance.
Unless one has a 'sponsor', advancement is limited. The majority of time, promotions are not based on capability, but based on who you know.
Having to work with people who don't pull their weight, who have been shuffled from one program to another because management won't expend the effort required to document the issues and get rid of them. Lot's of 'deadwood'.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop promoting via the 'buddy' system. There are far too many inexperienced people in top positions who are adversely affecting the 'bottom line'. Implement Welch's annual purging of the bottom 10% of the staff.

Pros

Stability. No one ever gets laid off for being just average. At the most, they will be transferred to a different team. Time off is adequate. Most days are laid back and easy-going. An 8 hour day usually tops off at around 7hours, including lunch.

Cons

No room to advance unless someone dies or retires. Not much knowledge to gain either. Co-workers are not very motivated to learn new tools, concepts, or better ways of doing things. Salary is sub-par to comparable positions outside of the defense industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop focusing so much on advancing your own career or trying to cut costs, and start paying attention to your staff's needs. The latter approach may just foster enough positive sentiment to catapult you to Director level.