Boeing Satellite Systems International Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Educational benefits are very good. The company will sponsor you to take classes at universities.
The opportunities to work on very advanced projects are very good, too. If you get aggressive and work hard for them, the chances are great for you to accumulate some very good experiences.

Cons

The pay is mediocre. Definitely not a place where you can get yourself rich.
Generally speaking, the defense industry is a stable place to be in. But there can still be layoffs happening, especially when the economy is in really bad shape, or when big projects are lost. Things are relatively slow compared to the commercial world.

Advice to Senior Management

NA

Pros

The benefits are extremely good. Good health care, disability plans and life insurance. The disability plans don't cost you a dime. There is plenty of potential to be had at BSS but serious reorganizing and restructuring would be required first.

Cons

Your best chance on being promoted relies on your gender. Females are treated much better and those that sleep with their bosses are promoted faster than anyone. Males are a dime a dozen in an industry such as this one so maybe this pattern is the norm within all engineering companies, but I certainly hope not.

Work also does not flow down from management as it should and schedules and worker assignments are not allocated correctly. People sit around a good portion of the day waiting for information they need to do their work, or waiting for an assignment from management. This is a serious problem on DOD programs.

Advice to Senior Management

I don't even know how to restructure things, I'm not a manager, but there are definitely too many levels of management with managers managers single managers below them. This waste time and money, and prevents work assignments from reaching someone that will do the work. One thing above all is to practice ethics and decency, stop looking at genders and look at productivity, knowledge, and usefullness... And stop sleeping with the females working under you.

Pros

Pay and benefits are pretty good. If you can tolerate the micro-managing of some of the managers then you will do well. A lot of the programs being worked at Boeing a very very exciting and have value to the country.

Cons

Too much micro-managing at the lower to mid-level managers. The company moves it's managers around too much before they fully understand and know the people and products they are managing. Employees do not get to know and build a relationship of trust and loyality before a manager is moved and another one is put in place requiring the process to start anew.

Advice to Senior Management

Lower/mid-level managers are not given enough time to develop their staff before being moved to other positions. No chance to build trust or loyality. Several of the metrics collected are seen by the employees as micro-managing and not useful information.

Pros

Excellent benefits. You can obtain any degree and take any course for your own future career path. There is 4% percent matching to your 401k. The medical benefits package is very diverse suitable for anyone.

Cons

Management is only looking out for themselves. You'll get a good pat on the back for a good job, but don't look forward to seeing a higher salary. A lot of favoratism when it comes to raises and good work assignments. Not really a stable place to work because they hire out of the blue and lay offs are lightening fast when no contracts are given to them. You have to be very alert when you work on a program and make sure you have something else to do when the program runs out of money.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit sitting on the chair and learn more about your employees.

Pros

The benefits, especially the educational assistance. No managerial approval is needed to take a class and the classes don't even have to relate to your field of work. You'll get reimbursed if you get a C.

Cons

The lower level management isn't very passionate about what they do. In retrospect I don't think that they are given the tools of the chances to succeed by the higher level management, but still there were a lot of people that probably shouldn't be managers in the engineering department.

Advice to Senior Management

Just because an employee is a great technical asset doesn't mean they know anything about managing others. You need to make sure you bring up the right people, and if it they don't work out, you need to be pro active about doing some house cleaning instead of waiting for the economy to do it for you.

Pros

Benefits like in health, ete.

Cons

on site location, poor management

Advice to Senior Management

improve the business management

Pros

Interesting technology development activities with the possibility of a decade of challenging work for engineers and technicians.

Cons

Boeing seems unable to deliver successful programs on time or on budget. This leads to a stressful environment for workers and management both. While the Boeing Company has success stories in the field of Commercial and Military Aircraft development, they have had a mixed history in satellite and space systems. When Boeing aquired Hughes Satellite Systems and Rockwell (formerly Ford Aerospace) they never developed a management strategy that leveraged the talents of these companies that were among the best in satellite and space systems development from decades passed.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to leverage the skills that exist at Boeing Satellite Systems to improve competitiveness and sucess while retaining the technical edge that existed in the 70's, 80's and 90's.

Pros

some good engineering practices to learn from, educational benefits are the best, above average general benefits

Cons

no longer believe in engineering design, an integrator that doesn't know how to manage subcontractors, inability to win contracts

Advice to Senior Management

make a firm decision on the direction to go. we are either a system integrator, with no design expertise, or trust your engineers and allow them to design instead of looking to outsource as the first option and fail miserably before sending engineers to do the redesign. As is, Boeing Satellite has no identity.