Hamilton Sundstrand Reviews

Pros

Made a good hourly wage, co-workers were great.
Best manufacturing facility in IL.

Cons

Management lied to employees, experianced being lock out as a union employee.
Sundstrand was great until purchased by United Tech, they they rode us hard and put it to us dry!

Advice to Senior Management

Just be honest and real, as you now know Americans are in this together.

Pros

Proximity to home
Free gym membership
401K
Health Insurance
Pension

Cons

No annual bonus for majority of employes
Officers of the company work WAY to many hours
Unrealistic expectations with competing metrics

Advice to Senior Management

Share the wealth with the people who make the company successful, not just the upper echelon

Pros

Pays well, great co-workers, I can finally see sunlight

Cons

Very little vacation time even after 5 years

Pros

The work is exciting and highly technical.
Fellow employees are top notch.
The pay is comparable to other aerospace companies.
Number of hours required to work each week is not too bad in the space business, 40-50.

Cons

Depending on whether you go through the engineering side or the operations side there are 9 or 11 levels of management just in the space systems department. Then there are multiple levels above all of them over in the commercial aerospace side of HS. This means that you are that much more removed from anyone that actually has authority to make a decision regarding your career or the resources at the company.
The performance feedback system does not work. It has no impact on your compensation or timing for promotions. There was a system to force a certain number of low ratings even if people did not warrant it.
The average age is quite high, about 50. Which is why there are so many middle layers of management. Made the work environment not very pleasant as many people were unhappy but were not able to leave.

The insane focus on the cleanliness of office and lab areas offers plenty of pitfalls for getting noticed in a bad way, but there is no opportunity to get noticed in a good way.
I'm not kidding when I say insane. Management would walk around and search your desk drawers to make sure everything was in order and the drawer was labelled with the right label. Pictures were taken of the desk while clean and then had to be hung at your desk. It made for this paranoid gestapo environment where having a clean desk was actually more important than doing good engineering work. You basically never wanted to stand out or be noticed, because that was always negative and never a positive thing. It really made it feel like kindergarten.

The IT situation is very bad. I had my laptop go down twice for extended periods. Both times it took over a month to fix. I was never given a replacement. I had to run around using other computers to keep up with work.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a way to better engage technical engineers that do not want to be managers. You should reduce the number of management levels. There needs to be a clear advancement path for people to shoot for and it should be linked to the performance feedback. When people feel in control of their career, they are empowered and their work is far superior to when they feel advancement is completely random.

Eliminate horribly inefficient bureaucracy that adds nothing and just wastes time and money.

Treat people like adults and they will surprise you. Don't treat them like convicts or toddlers. Seriously, grade school children are treated with more respect than the employees.

Pros

very good benefits. part of big organization. if you like what you do you can advance quite a bit, but it is a slow advancement.

Cons

slow advancement. not able to understand strengths of the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand strengths of the employee and encourage resource sharing and outside sources of knowledge improvement.

Pros

Great benefits, including significant tuition reimbursement. Tuition reimbursement is given almost regardless of your chosen degree program. Management is also flexible enough to allow employees to work non-standard hours.

Cons

A lot of time is spent doing non-value added activities. Much of the time the activities are forced on employees because of controls that are put in place at the UTC corporate level. Top level management also gives significant pressure to grow the business, without always allowing for the additional tools, employees, etc. that are required to support the new business. The result is that in some parts of the business employees are put under immense pressure to deal. Similarly, engineers are often a grinding point between functional management, program management, and customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop putting unrealistic expectations on employees. The environment is becoming demoralizing for many, and consequently many good employees are leaving the company.

Pros

The environment is very friendly and engaging. The managers we're friendly and helpful, the workload was distributed with specific instructions and left team members confident in the goals of the tasks assigned

Cons

Depending on certain milestones, working overtime was mandatory becuase of such heavy workloads. Working here wasn't peftect as no company is perfect, but the mangers I worked with did their best in making the work organized and comfortable.

Advice to Senior Management

I think that everyone in management positions should hold workshops on holding effective meetings so that eveyone knows what the current objective of the meetings are.

Pros

Made my own schedule
Good pay

Cons

You have the same responsibilities as full time employers yet you do not get paid the same or get benefits

Pros

You get a good look and view at the business world on a
 professional level. The pay is good too.

Cons

Foolishness is not tolerated, every need to be on task, no joke allowed . College degree is required
To fully enjoyed and be proficient at your job.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the good work and continue to maintain a good reputation. Stick with the company rules
and policies , plus enforce them .

Pros

Good People to work with
Most mangers are fair and accommodating

Cons

Poor Salary in comparison to other companies
Too much bureaucracy
Outsourcing and cost reduction getting out of hand (esp with record profits)
Stretched resources and over worked employees to make deadlines

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to treat employees as people and not number or cogs in a wheel. Employees are not interchangeable at the flick of a wrist. Additionally, promote from within. Too often you see a new VP or senior staff member with a couple years of HS experience and multiple years at other companies.