General Dynamics Reviews

Pros

Pride in the missions - top quality, cutting-edge defense products and services as well as the best business jets (Gulfstream). Solid foundation of conducting business with integrity and high standards of business ethics.

Cons

Conservative work environment that sometimes struggles to keep pace with current trends in such areas as work/family, flexible work arrangementes, use of social media, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

Remember to put as much emphasis on Leading People and Teamwork as you do on technical and financial excellence.

Pros

Fair benefits, good location and coworkers

Cons

Management at a certain facility is very deceptive. They led a campaign for months to take over our project even to go as far as staging a fake audit to learn how we do our jobs. Their management sat among us gathering information and asking us to provide them with reports. Then when we were advised that we were being laid off they kept us long enough to train our replacements. They were flown to our facility for several weeks so we could train them and then we were escorted out of the building. I have never felt so used and mistreated. Then our severance pay was one week of pay for every year we were there MINUS what unemployment paid us weekly. I regret leaving my old employer thinking that I had great opportunity at General Dynamics. Beware......

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to attend training classes to learn how to manage!

Pros

Decent benefits, good stock plan, decent people on the working floors

Cons

Over the last ten years Senior Management has been treating the Customer as their personal piggy bank, running up the billed hours in order to make sales quotas and executive bonuses (and the Customer knows it). Management has invested little to nothing in actual product development (has not developed any tech demonstration platforms in 10+ years), and refuses to train employees in anything (except mandatory security refreshers). The VP of Engineering has been physically escorted off The Customer's premises on at least two occasions. After two consecutive multi-billion dollar flops, The Customer has recently informed the rest of the world that they don't need and don't want the product anymore. Division recently laid off ~200 people, cuts are expected to reach at least 1000 employees before year's end. In short, the division is going out of business, and Management is still trying to pretend that nothing is wrong.

Advice to Senior Management

It is probably too late to save the division. But if anyone really wanted to try, the first step would be to fire anyone in the division whose title includes President, Senior Vice President, Vice President, Senior Director, Director, and Senior Manager (yes, that's six levels of senior management, compared to four levels of floor employees). Next, bring in leaders from successful divisions to run operations until adequate candidates can be found and developed from inside. Third, make sure that the new leadership actually is co-located with the people they lead; remove the palaces in Mahogany Row and revoke all other executive privileges. Fourth, fix the time accounting system and remove the other administrative roadblocks. Finally, establish *and fund* a dedicated new product development team with a dedicated procurement arm (separate and independent from Production supply chain management).

Pros

General Dynamics has proven to be one of the best places I have ever worked. At a time when I felt I had gone as far as I could go, I was proven wrong with a merit promotion to the next level. There is also paid training for those seeking to advance their skills and make themselves more marketable by obtaining a degree or job related certification.

Cons

Any downsides I could list that are applicable to working at General Dynamics would also generally apply to working at any employer anywhere in the US. Some things are not specific to employers but are experienced more broadly by most everyone at one time or another who has been in the work force any length of time. There are however some in our organization that do not get the recognition that they deserve because their work, although vital to the mission is not as visible thereby leaving them to languish on the vine and seek other venues of employment. This is unfortunate for any company.

Advice to Senior Management

Know your employees...even the quiet contributors. Recognize and know the value and level of contribution of employees even if they are employees who don't toot their own horns. Lack of improvement in this area, could potentially cost the company a good, loyal, hardworking employee. Having been with the company for as long as I have, I know that maintaining a quality work force is of great concern to the management team.

Pros

The General Dynamics name looks good on your resume, but SATCOM Technologies is just a small to medium sized company owned by General Dynamics which isn't run anything like the real General Dynamics company, and has none of the good benefits that a large company has.

Cons

See rewiews listed under SATCOM Technologies without a location to see the actual SATCOM Technologies ratings & reviews.
I worked at General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies, located in Richardson, TX as a Materials and Production Planner / Coordinator for over 4.5 years and there was never any acknowledgement or appreciation shown for any of the many good things done because they were so busy constantly trying to find anything they could find that wasn’t 100% accurate 100% of the time, which they would make things up and lie if they couldn't find something done 100% accurate.
The company is owned by General Dynamics in name, but is actually a small to medium sized company that operates under its own rules which they'll twist around and make up as they go along to suit their needs at the moment.
Their job descriptions on job postings nearly always list “other duties as assigned” so they can keep adding more and more duties you’re responsible for doing. And if you inform them you’re already performing the greatest number of tasks you can possibly do, they just say you need to work more overtime to keep up or they’ll force you to work up to 60 hrs by making it mandatory. Management will lie and twist what you say and what they’ve said around to meet whatever their need is at that moment, and the employee is always guilty no matter that written documentation you have to prove your innocence all the way up to the corporate office in Duluth GA.
The duties listed in the job description I hired in under as a Materials Planner I only listed a small portion of the duties I was performing when I finally turned in my resignation. No matter what I did it was never good enough because everything had to be 100% accurate 100% of the time or I was written up for not performing an adequate job or not performing my job fast enough, even though my supervisor had no knowledge of what it took to do many of my duties which includes the manual forecasting on a 45 to 50 page MS Excel report. Other duties added that wasn't in the original job listing was the requirement to also plan and coordinate the purchasing, kitting, and building of production jobs, managing the FG inventory and performing all inventory transactions in their inventory program that is little more than an accounting program with a limited inventory module included. I was also responsible for verifying that all inventory transactions had been performed prior to accounting closing the job charge numbers, turning in purchase requisitions in to purchasing for all common stock used on the manufacturing floor, inventory and WIP cycle counting and many other duties not listed on the original job description other than what would fall under the “other duties as assigned” category.
HR and management throughout the company gives supervisors a free pass to treat their employees as badly as they would like. This way the company saves money by having an excuse to give employees even less of a pay increases than the normal low 2% annual rate increase that's normally given out to non-management employees. My supervisor and co-workers supervisors have admitted that our site management has had them lower our ratings they had given us on our yearly reviews to match what money and over all ratings they had already decided to give each employee earlier in the year.

Advice to Senior Management

SATCOM Technologies Management needs to learn to value and appreciate their employees when a good job is done, and not take them for granted and feel that they can treat their employees any way they like and expect them to stay around for long.
I had heard management say to me and several other employees that we should appreciate that we have a job and be willing to do whatever is asked of us because jobs are hard to come by these day’s, which is in no way a professional attitude or thing to say to your employees who are doing everything possible to do an excellent job and help the company perform at its best.

Pros

perfect distance and good work enviroment

Cons

company re organization alll the times

Advice to Senior Management

reward employees for their efforts and support them.

Pros

General Dynamics takes care of its employees. At GD you will be able to work on some of the most complex projects in the world.

Cons

Working at such a large company, you tend to get lost in the woodwork. If you want to make it you need to speak out and stick up for yourself.

Advice to Senior Management

There is too much pressure on middle management to do work. They should be trained to delegate more of their work so they can manage the engineers better.

Pros

Good Benifits!! Good work environment.

Cons

Very, Very, Very large company.,

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

location with respect to housing price

Cons

poor advancement possibilities based on seniority

Advice to Senior Management

treat senior employees with respect

Pros

Important work for National Security

Cons

Way too Bureaucratic. Too Stovepiped. Not entrepreneurial. Will not take risks. Sole Source mentality. Constantant, endless Powerpoint briefings. No one will make a decision. Too afraid of risking their position. Directors are skating to retirement.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire the non producing Directors, like Jack Welch did at GE and Secy Gates did in DoD. Get some young entrepreneurial blood in the Directors line. Not guys who are in their 60's looking to retire. Hold them accountable. Duh!!! Set goals and targets and demand they be met!!! Encourage prudent risk taking. Be willing to advance fund contracts (AWARs) so that we can intelligently perform!!! Be willing to fund inventory--when it makes prudent, business sense. Realize that if you don't change, you will become irrelevant!!!