Lockheed Martin Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company is a great place to start a career because it gives you instant experience with a large multi-national corporation and it is very recognizable as a brand and as a respected employer.

Cons

It is very much an old boy network. It seems like there are very few growth opportunities unless you've been employed there more than 20 years. Government contracts can be run similar to the way the government runs (slow, clunky, bureaucratic, stuck-in-their-old-ways)

Advice to Senior Management

Please focus on eliminating several fluff layers of management. It is so ridiculously rigid as far as job levels and responsibilities go that it can be stifling.

Pros

Very fair pay, wonderful benefits, great retirement savings. You are forced to learn a lot and learn quickly, which is a good thing. Very prestigious company to work for. The name impresses people. High retention rate compared to other corporations.

Cons

Do not expect any work/life balance. Lockheed Martin lays mass amounts of people off then hands their jobs over to the staff left behind, with no concern. I have over four weeks of vacation that I can never use- work load does not allow me to. 50 hours + per week is always the norm at Lockheed Martin. Don't forget to bring your laptop home. "Do more with less and be happy you have a job" is the mantra in this corporation.

Advice to Senior Management

Try evening out employee workloads rather than having some employees with huge work loads and others with minimal. You are punishing your high producers. This is one item that is continuiously overlooked. It could help Lockheed Martin achieve the work/life balance that is constantly promotes in recruitment advertisements.

Pros

Abundance of locations
Benefits
Support from management
Flexible hours

Cons

Slow paced
Lower salary
Flat hiring curve

Advice to Senior Management

First line manager was awesome, really took care of the interns.

Pros

Great worklife balance structure in place but..... when your manager is incompetent and forces employees to "work" long hours (I say "work" because a lot of time is spent on non-sensical gibbering and talking in circles to appear as they know what they are talking about) you kind of resent your office and can be quite stressful

Cons

Incompetence is ignored; managment should consider adding a component to the review process where employee's rate their reporting manager. The managers may actually learn something and take some corrective action.

Advice to Senior Management

Ensure your managers can actually manage

Pros

Lockheed Martin is a very competitive place to work, and the dynamics of the employee atmosphere is great. Many of the senior employees are always willing to go out of their way to bring the newer employees along, which makes for a very rewarding experience.

Cons

Communication between the administration and the other employees lacks most of the time. Several employees along with management are spread to thin sometimes with their work loads. This leads to very few or short conversations about employee satisfaction and reviews on the quality of work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more involved with the employees as individuals. There feels like there is a barrier between management and workers like you would expect between the visitors at a zoo and the animals there.

Pros

Great co-workers
My program was very well run
Committment to excellence

Cons

Was difficult to break in to "good old boys" management

Advice to Senior Management

Look beyond the Penn State Frat boys for promotions

Pros

Great 401K match (50% match up to a maximum of 4%) / fantastic tuition assistance program ($15,000 per year for an engineering Master's/PhD)

Cons

Having to get used to cubicle life / difficult for interns to land in a location they prefer to work

Advice to Senior Management

Help interns land in a location they prefer / offer the LDP program to incoming engineering graduates / recruit on smaller school campuses

Pros

Nice people who are very understanding of the work life balance. Great benefits and, for the most part, great job stability.

Cons

There were extremely incompetent people working at senior levels only because they had been in the job so long, and management wasn't competent enough to know that their employees we're worthless. Getting anything done required politics and arguing against people who were technically incapable of having an opinion.

Advice to Senior Management

Please make an effort to vet your employees for competence. Your best employees will leave if they feel like they're swimming upstream every single day.

Pros

Great salary and benefits and an absolute obsession with tracking every last minute of overtime. They have no problem with paying people to sit around and wait for something to do.

Cons

Absolutely no strategy for how to compete unless it involves lobbying Congress for more handouts. Managers completely immobilized by trying to cover their assess once things inevitably go wrong.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut out about ten layers of management, listen to people who actually have experience in the sectors you're trying to penetrate.

Pros

Lockheed is a great place to learn how to solve problems at scale with cutting edge techonlogy and leverage multiple engineering disciplines

Cons

Lockheed is a very bureaucratic and conservative. Don't expect to be put in charge of projects until you have put in your time.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should better reward its star performers. Non-performers should not be kept around and absolutely no site should have a unionized engineering work force.