MacDonald Dettwiler Reviews

Pros

-Amazing project management skills (2 yr project was only over time by 2 weeks)
-Great leadership in aviation.
-People in the office are happy.
-Easy to take time off with little notice
-Great team building events
-A great deal of design goes in to their software.
-Although they are a larger corporation, individual projects are much smaller, giving MDA a less bureaucratic feel.

Cons

-Shared offices have no natural light
-I've heard pay is lower than comparable places, however the stress level is much lower here.
-Keeping track of time for billing purposes can be tiring at times.

Advice to Senior Management

-There has been a lot of internal talk about saving up cash to build the organization. Bonuses, salary increases, etc should be given to those who got you there. MDA has a reputation of low paying work and this could easily be remedied because money is not all that tight.

Pros

- Great place to learn software development process
- Great benefits
- People are cool to work with
- Interesting projects

Cons

- Really low pay, below industry standards
- Poor working condition; ie. poor lighting and air circulation

Advice to Senior Management

Start paying employees what they're worth or you'll start losing all your talent.

Pros

Diversity in kinds of work
Free parking (really!)

Cons

The business and leadership is risk averse and this flows down to everybody, to the point of looking for reasons not to do anything like innovate.

Zero salary increases in the last 5 years (ok, one year I got a $200 increase. ) No motivation to improve there, is there?

Management is reactive not leading the employment issues of 2012; zero raises, zero employment and a lot of people looking to leave soon.

Advice to Senior Management

Lose Friedmann. He's been there too long and has too many brown-nosers around him. There is some benefit in a complete replacement of senior management. Let's find out what that is.

Pros

good benefit package, good training grounds

Cons

low pay in comparison with other organizations, big divide between the engineers and non-engineers, advancements and perks are always handed to the first group, no opportunities for advancement for the support staff

Advice to Senior Management

say 'good morning' to people in the hallways..

Pros

great place for entry levels to start learning proper structure of programs and work with multiple teams to integrate into one complete product

Cons

really really crappy pay i gotta say, area is very rural, nearest place to eat is quiznos, feels like a jailcell

Advice to Senior Management

pay the employees better, organize more company sport activities, hire more women because there are way too many guys in mda

Pros

High Quality Software Engineering work.
Private Offices
Food on site (even if it isn't very good)
Can bank extra hours worked for time off

Cons

Very low pay.
Broken commitments / promises from HR and managers.
Below local inflation annual pay increases when you get a good or excellent performance review.
Very cold / strict senior management / HR policies.
No real effort made to keep departing staff with better job offers.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop speaking as if we are world leading company when we can't keep good staff or hire good staff due to low pay.

Pros

Work on exciting project and gain valuable experience

Cons

Poor leadership focused on what is good for management

Advice to Senior Management

Value your employees more

Pros

Unique domain, relatively flexible working environment, great co-workers

Cons

limited career growth, lack of respect from senior management, poor / unclear corporate strategy

Advice to Senior Management

Improve soft-skills and appreciate value of human capital

Pros

Great health benefits package with opportunities to move up in the field. They recognize those who have been with the company for a long time and celebrate their tenure.

Cons

Very structured. Can be difficult to get a way in edgewise. Managment can be stubborn or authorotarian with little room to play with budgets.

Advice to Senior Management

Take advanatge of your employees and their knowledge. Move them around and find the right fit before forcing them to move on. A competitive salary package that shows advancment opportunites may help as well.

Pros

- job security
- friendly people
- office environment
- offsite training

Cons

- low annual merit increases (below market inflation)

Advice to Senior Management

n/a