Raytheon Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

Strong company, driven to succeed and train employees to be successful.

Cons

New employees have a difficult time establishing themselves in an environment of other long-time Raytheon employees

Advice to Senior Management

Rely less on "legacy" employee leadership, drive change through teams from bottom up

Pros

Work-life balance
Many locations
Engineers are nice to work with

Cons

Lots of bureaucracy and process

Pros

Working for Raytheon will expose you to a number of competent and experienced individuals. There is a lot to be learned from the older peers as long as you can find the right programs to work on where you can interact with these people.

Cons

The management team tends to be very disconnected from the people who they lead, often making decisions that run counter to the information they are given. The ability for younger engineers to advance and develop is hindered by the lack of focus by management on the topic.

Pros

Raytheon offers good salaries and benefits. They also have a 9/80 work schedule and flex time.

Cons

Job is affected by political cycle (DOD budget). Government programs are smaller now and job assignments are shorter durations. This can add to stress an employees career.

Pros

Appropriately ranged compensation
Room for advancement if project metrics met
Numerous awards for worksite, health and wellness, environmental acheivement

Cons

Work flow unstable
Work projects can force skillset into old or niche position.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce overhead costs
Decentralize specific functions such as accounting, HR

Pros

Management is knowledgable and personable

Cons

Does not back up the talk, overhype. You have opportunities to experience new exciting things, but no one teach you about it. Ambiguity - do this and figure how to do it - afterwards harsh reviews if not accurate.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure your employees are a reflection of you....

Pros

PTO, Flex Schedule, Retirement benefits. All in all, the benefits package is better than most companies. They truly endorse a work life balance and for sure as a company they are in the lead for benefits.

Cons

Have to spend most of your time trying to figure out the politics and not just doing your job. Management will not manage but rather delegate. They seem to have all the answers after the fact - when the solution becomes painfully obvious. If you approach a manager and try to get them to take any action, you'll get clobbered. and of course when somethimg goes wrong, they'll say "why didn't you say something!"The spit second 1/2 sentence is spoken, they'll hammer you and try to make you look like an idiot. Those who survive, have learned to let the bus drive off the cliff and walk away without caring - if you want to do a good job, and try to make things happen (no matter how carefull you proceed) - your career is short lived. HR is nothing but a listening post - henceforth managers have no bounds. They post electronic bulletin board that says "raise your hand if you see something wrong" ... OMG what a joke - that's a sure way to be on the next off-list! They have a performance review policy that is nothing more than a popularity contest. If you ever so slightly (ever so carefully) try to express an opinion when something is going wrong - guaranteed at your next performace review you'll be accused of not being a "team player", even if in the process you have to accept and go with the flow while your task/project is MORE THAN 100% over budget! The review process collects input for all those who you worked with through out the year, and no matter how hard you try, they have to get some "dirt" on you even if they have to make something up! No matter how many GOOD data points are collected, they will look hard to find SOMETHING to pin on you, again even if they have to make something up - I suspect because its mandated from higher up.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop paying 100% attention trying to beat down your workers and spend more time working toward coming up with the solution. But before that happens, you have to first hire technologists - you have to understand the technology long before you can even come close to coming up with solutions. In the EE lab, software lab, etc, such incompetance is not tolerated, but in IDS IT it's allowed simply because if we mess things up the first time, we can try many times again - we have no end product to deliver to the customer. And besides, those in management positions have a lots of "little people" to blame for their mistakes and by the time their superiors figure it out, they've already given their notice to retire anyhow.

Pros

* Very high compensation per unit of effort ratio, mainly because the denominator is very small.
* Because Raytheon is a government contractor, full time employees work exactly 40 hours a week. If you are asked to work more, you will get paid overtime (at 1x pay).
* Very flexible work hours. Some people regularly go to work at noon.
* If you want a pretty high paying job, but you don't want to work too hard, you are not very ambitious, or you are not the brightest person in the world, then this is a great job. You will get paid well and you cannot get fired unless you commit a crime, perform sexual harassment, look at porno at work, commit security violations, etc.

Cons

* Very dependent on the defense cycle. After 9/11, the defense industry was booming. Lots of hiring, lots of money for interesting work. With all the budget issues lately (2010-2011), the first place to get cut is in defense R&D and in new projects. It makes sense: the government will pay for bullets and body armor for soldiers in Iraq, but they won't research new radar systems.
* Raytheon mainly does systems testing and integration. A lot of smart people get frustrated because the difficult, innovative work isn't respected. The genius who finds solutions to everything might not get compensated as well as the dummy that leads the test. If you like the research side, go work at MIT Lincoln Laboratory instead (although the pay will be about 25% less than Raytheon).
* Diminishing returns on compensation. Moving up in the company is mainly a function of age, not skill. Many talented engineers that start at Raytheon leave after 3-5 years because the raises are promotions are big and fast, but hits diminishing returns quickly. Those that choose to stay longer tend to be known as "lifers" because they are very unlikely to ever leave the company.
* Non-transferable skills. Programming is done on ancient language (military follows the rule of "if it ain't broke, don't if it"). All the processes and knowledge is very contained to the defense industry. Another big reason why people who stay more than 3-5 years become "lifers".
* Security clearance can be a pain, especially for people not born in the U.S. or people with immediate foreign relatives.

Advice to Senior Management

Make employees feel better. I can understand why the company is run the way it is run. The government pays by "man hours" for many of Raytheon's contracts. And Raytheon runs up hours very well, the smart engineers would say it is because they hire a bunch of dummies who can barely get work done. At least try to make it seem like the smart guys are appreciated, even if there is no financial reason to do so.

Pros

good benefits, a stable employer when the govt funding is there

Cons

lots of long-timers and stuck in the mud thinking. old tech, the company is happy to let your skills languish as long as it meets their needs

Advice to Senior Management

update things and find a way around the security concerns to ally people less hassle

Pros

When given something challenging, it is a good place to work
Most people I worked with, we had a good comraderie
Benefits were good

Cons

Training was available only when there was money in the budget for it.
Also, upper management will not allow you to take a course, if they don't think you need it, but it would benefit you on climbing the ladder.
Too much anamousity between SW and Systems.
Need to go after commercial contracts while waiting for that big defense contract.

Advice to Senior Management

Do not place people in the does not meets category just to meet the HR quota, if you want to destroy morale that is one of the best ways to do it.
Also, be upfront with the employees when a RIF is coming and don't say you can't answer the question when you know darn well a RIF will take place the next day, get some backbone.