BAE Systems Land and Armaments – “Good working environment, professional and non-political, but you're a small fish in a big pond.”

Pros

Good work environment. Within engineering, the environment is professional and non-political. Management is more competent than in other large employers I've had, and appreciates challenges from lower ranks in response to top-down directions; communication flows well both ways.

Cons

The company has grown into a behemoth bureaucracy with defined procedures for everything - and it's hard to find the people who know the procedures to get things done. If you like a smaller company atmosphere with fewer management layers, BAE is not for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay less attention to political affiliations and geography, and more attention to which areas of expertise are offered by individual employees throughout the company regardless of where they are. Stop the double-speak about being a "borderless" company at the same time expecting to build centers of capability in specific locations - either it matters where we work, or it doesn't.