Crane Aerospace & Electronics Reviews

Pros

Small company feel with big company projects. Very easy to work cross functionally and find new challenges where you can make a difference. Advancement opportunities are plentiful for those motivated and capable.

Cons

And significant portion of the workforce seems to be waiting for retirement and tend to be less engaged. Also many of you colleagues have been here there entire career and are less open to change than one would hope.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue working to improve transparency and communication, get people excited about the genuinely cool projects they are involved in and get obstructionists out of the way of real progress.

Pros

Manufactures product locally. (and in Taiwan)
Hybrids, ie: die on ceramic substrate.
9/80 work week. Every 2nd Friday is off, unless project requires extra hours.
Radiation tolerant design, very specialized and demanding niche.
Some great people, many with very long tenures. (loyalty to team)
Middle mgmt works hard to blunt the criticism and under-appreciation of mgmt.
Nice campus, lunchtime walks.
Operational Excellence approach to manufacturing.

Cons

Overly frugal approach to all aspects of the business: Facilities, pay, benefits, equipment, capital expenditures. Entering the building, visiting Engineering or the Manufacturing floor is like a trip to the 70's or 80's.
Employee attraction/retention is not a concern. (during the recession, under-market salary offers and no merit increases were the norm, because Crane could). With the improving economy, Crane is kicking and screaming, but is considering making some changes. Eg: increase avg salary to the 50% market level. Some mgmt is proud of paying less than market for staff.
The level of professionalism and the caliber of staff reflects this. Crane won't pay for top-talent people. Turnover by top-talent folks is high.
HR is way more concerned about the company than about the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

- Occasionally leave the cloistered tower. Visit the 1st or 2nd floor, or better yet, the manufacturing building. MBWA!
- Change the cheapskate ways, or the improving economy will increase departures and cripple efforts to attract talent.
- Change the mindset that you're very shrewd in paying bottom tier wages.
- Institutional knowledge for the design and manufacture of radiation tolerant converters is critical. Takes steps to retain that expertise, it's cheap compared to rebuilding that expertise!
- Make employees feel valued, even appreciated. A tee shirt after a 1 year development project is more insult than reward. A simple cloth lanyard for your ID badge as a 10 year service award is cheezy. Fail!
- Provide a reasonable budget for capital equipment. The antiquated equipment in Engineering and Production impacts productivity, and ironically, the "total cost of ownership" of outdated equipment is higher.
- Bring some business logic to the area of Kaizens. The rabid pursuit of kaizen metrics (two per year per manager, no excuses!) is without a honest & robust ROI review.

Pros

Friendly co-workers. Adequate benefits plan and PTO's.

Cons

Stressful, management by fear, poor communication, no attempt at work/life balance, demands are unreasonable

Advice to Senior Management

Enough with the negative feedback and negative reinforcements already. Listen to the employees. Also stop trying to play your mind games with employees and just let them know what you really want and expect from them.

Pros

Good benefits. Good PTO, but PTO time is discretely discouraged.

Cons

Poor communication. A lot of finger pointing about who is at fault.
Company holds workers to impossible goals.
Management does not provide quality or positive feedback to the employees but does provide a ton of negative feedback on everything.
Management is completely disconnected from what is really going on.
Terrible work/life balance.
Employees burn out quickly.

Advice to Senior Management

It is sad to see the downward spiraling of this company.

Pros

Work life balance
Passion for continuous improvement
Smart people and cool products/projects
Fair compensation and benefits

Cons

This large company operates as smaller companies (pro and con)
Lack of clear development plans for employees (getting better)

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more about direction of company. Transparency is a core value so please tell people how they are doing.

Pros

Flexible hours and management that understands we all have lives off site.
Working in project teams allows members to contribute based on individual strengths, and encourages feedback and open dialog.

Cons

Myriad changes over the last 10 years have produced a confusing system of mix and match procedures and standards that frustrate new employees.
Nebulous hiring and promoting process can make it difficult to know where ones job is going, or what ones job entails.

Advice to Senior Management

Transparency and clear communication go along way to improving moral. A management structure that is concerned with the welfare of its employees engenders employees that are concerned with the welfare of its employers.

Pros

My role puts me in close touch with many of the managers (mostly in Engineering but also in Operations) and I've found most of them to be very nice - the kind of people you don't mind going to a beer with after work.

When we are in our frequent crisis mode with heavy overtime for months at a time management does their best to compensate the participants. In the past they've given bonuses, given comp time (though this may have been unofficial), even arranged to have engineers paid hourly for up to five hours of OT a week.

Cons

As with many large companies the corporate office is concerned only with making a buck. Spending on employees beyond salaries is scant. We do have an activity committee and a small annual party but the budget level (around $60 a person for the year I think). The facility is pretty dull - take some time to look around if you do an on-site interview.

Communication from leadership is poor and the grapevine is the only way people get most news, I've even a the VP joke in a company wide news meeting that everyone probably already knew what he was about to say his news was so stale.

Most of the engineering employees are middle aged with families who eat lunch at their desks and then scoot home after work. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're young and looking for a company with lots of energy and think going to happy hour with coworkers is a good thing then you'll be hard pressed to find people to do it with. You'll have more luck getting people to go to lunch, but even then it doesn't happen a lot.

Engineering seems to always be in crunch mode on one program or another and months of heavy overtime aren't unusual for them.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the HR leadership so HR is at least a little bit there for employees - not 100% dedicated to protected Crane without caring at all about the employees.

Pros

Great people to work with!

Cons

Declining benefits and employee incentives

Advice to Senior Management

Instead of cutting the bottom line, invest in it!

Pros

- Pay is decent
- 9/80 Schedule
- Co-workers are top notch
- My manager rocks

Cons

- They say the customer is first, but there is so much busy work they always come 2nd.
- Contracts department has absolute power and they prevent orders
- Lame Richard Crane slide is used for all presentations and no one reads it
- Financial and Process driven company, not technology driven

Advice to Senior Management

People are your most important asset, not operating profit.

Pros

The working time is much more elastic than ordinary company in Taiwan. Great atmosphere in office. Good growth opportunity on both professional technique and field of vision.

Cons

Salary cannot be counted as "High" compared to some top local companies, such as TSMC, MTK, HTC, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Nice work. Please do keep on.