Boeing Reviews in St. Louis, MO Area

Pros

Wealth of opportunity, exceleent knowledge base

Cons

Entitled workforce, senior management out of touch with reality

Advice to Senior Management

Get more out of your people

Pros

Benefits package (though the company is slowly taking away benefits every year), somewhat competitive salaries, some groups have ability to work remotely 1-2 days per week, flexible work schedule.

Cons

Big generational gap, especially in management. Company is chipping away at their formerly lucrative benefits packages. Employees often find out about company developments from news headlines, not from within. Many unproductive employees slip through the cracks and take away from more efficient, productive employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more guidance to both management and employees on how to deal with generational differences. "Trim the fat" where it is needed. Share exciting developments with employees before announcements are made to news organizations. Return educational benefits to their former glory.

Pros

Good benefits--even for interns
Friendly, helpful people
Work life balance is good, maybe too relaxed
End products are interesting, although becoming outdated and unneeded (Military side)

Cons

Skills learned can only be leveraged at Boeing
Opportunities for advancement seem to be plenty, but not very "rich"
Every process is set in stone; innovation is the last thing on anyone's mind

Pros

Great flexibility and opportunity for advancement.

Cons

Slow interview and job offer process

Pros

I haven't looked into other jobs very seriously from what research I did, Boeing's salary is at or above other salaries. But, what puts them above the others is the benefits package--401k, pension (for some of us who have been there 3+ years), vision, dental, paid education, etc.

Cons

Boeing is a very large company with very large projects. And, you'll find that it is much harder and will take longer to get things done the larger the project/company. Adding the fact that most projects in St. Louis are military, that complicates it even more. You would think that when you're working with military projects, you'd be working on the cutting edge of technology. But, because things take so long and there are so many outside dependencies, the end product has parts that are over 10 years old. We have a running office joke that we're at the "trailing edge" of technology. This isn't that big of a deal until you start thinking about leaving the company.

We have been going through some layoffs. And, there were some demotions. I do not blame the company for this. The economy was contracting and it gave a good reason to trim some of the lower performing workers off the books. As for the demotions, they were simply trying to reduce the number of managers that were probably promoted too quickly. Then, when we lost projects, and they ended up in positions with no people reporting to them. Unfortunately, they have learned their lesson and are making it harder for other employees to get promoted.

I would love to work for a smaller company but with that would come a lower salary and reduced benefits. So, I'm probably gonna be here for the rest of my career. That is, of course, if there aren't massive layoffs when/if the defense budget is reduced.

Advice to Senior Management

I wish I had some advice to fix all of the cons I listed. But, I believe this is just a problem of being a large company. You can try and make company wide processes to try and streamline things, but by the time those processes get flowed down 5 levels of management, you'll find out that every project is different and the process won't completely apply.

Pros

The Cafeterias are a big plus.

Cons

Hit and miss with mid-level managers. Some are good, some are awful.
Upper management is a joke. They are completely removed from what is actually happening.
Waaaaaay tooooooo many meetings. Completely useless meetings.
Too many changes for the sake of making change.
Pretty much a typical office type of environment.
If you have a choice, stay away from the Travel Accounting Dept. no matter what!

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how things actually work in your company. Then maybe you could actually accomplish something.
Most of your contractors are better/smarter than your actual boeing employees. Your hiring practices only satisfy the Politically Correct Minded. Can that crap, and hire people who know what they are doing.
Good Luck

Pros

Great health, education, and retirement fund benefits. Opportunities to move around within the company and gain a variety of experience. While the work environment varies from group to group, there are plenty of good groups to work for.

Cons

Skills emphasized within the company may not transfer well to outside. Reductions in force (layoffs) affecting moral and quality of work in some areas. Major shifts in work environment occur with periodic reorganizations. Some areas have frequent changes in management.

Pros

healthy work environment
management is open to two way communication
opportunities for professional growth
good balance of work with personal life

Cons

layoffs have been a harsh reality in today's economy
large company, sometimes communication is not as frequent or as informative as I would hope

Pros

Great compensation, great benefits, good people with competent leadership.
For a software engineer, Boeing is a good place to grow as a leader managing complexity, but technical growth is limited to very specific facets of the defense industry. The work is somewhat interesting/enjoyable, and there are opportunities to present advances to the company and industry. Social ambition (offering to manage projects, presenting, running meetings, etc) is rewarded greatly, and technical ambition is rewarded only with breakthroughs, patents, etc.

Cons

In St. Louis, the location is pretty awful - in a bad area of town and older, dreary office buildings. My biggest complaint is that the company is so large and there are so many technical problems being solved, that there is a ton of redundancy. You might be working on a solution for a year, only to find that another team has implemented something very similar. Joining the solutions may be technically or politically difficult, so then each team attempts to justify its pursuit of the solution.

Technical competence is rewarded differently by different teams, and to truly stand out, I recommend joining an advanced technology organization like Phantom Works - this gives you the opportunity to work on more interesting DARPA projects and to pursue patents.

While leadership is generally competent, the overall management system at Boeing is overly complex and it can be very frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

Simplify the organizational structure. Get rid of 1/3rd of the engineering workforce, it's way too bloated. Give organizations clear and distinct goals, and do everything possible to eliminate overlap where unintended.

Pros

Employees are treated fairly, provided with interesting work, and good pay and benefits. Corporate values are taken seriously and do not take a back seat to profit.

Cons

The defense industry is cyclical and subject to political agendas and budgets. The combination of economic downturn and declining defense budgets has reduced the number of new product starts and consequently the need for development engineers.

Advice to Senior Management

Capitalize on the company's grasp of department of defense contracting to break into contracting with other government departments and agencies (Education, Justice, State, etc.) that have budget level cycles that are out of phase with the department of defense to better stabilize revenue and work.