Raytheon Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

large corporation & benefits. close to the beach and nice weather in southern california

Cons

large corporation, too much politics. There is not much room to move up in the company. Individual's job is too focused on the specialty.

Advice to Senior Management

what is the need of annual review? Get rid of it. Just ask what we need.

Pros

-9/80 scheduling
-Good health benefits
-401K matching (4% matched at 100%)
-Pretty relaxed atmosphere.
-Business casual attire.
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Cons

-Hard to move up quickly in the company.
-Promotions are considered before gaining input from shareholders.

Pros

-Great work schedule
-Great benefits
-Good pay
-Great locations to choose from

Cons

There was no congruency across the organization. Had a fantastic experience in Tucson and had great reviews. Transferred to El Segundo for a new position and they had no work and management was not flexible to let you utilize other skills you have--subsequently I received poor ratings as I was new and had no work. As a Mechanical Engineer I had done a lot of software and electrical work (was a former manufacturing electrician and IT tech) and my department actually took the work away from me and made me sit on overhead.

People at the California site don't work together. Due to the amount of layoffs over the past 10 years people have become very paranoid and will throw you under the bus even if you are performing. Everyone there is just scared for their job. Its a sad situation really.

Its a shame because I really enjoyed the industry, but when there is no work for your group...get out. I made the mistake of waiting it out and I was laid off.

Advice to Senior Management

Give feedback. If someone isn't performing up to par, tell them what you expect. There are many young engineers in the organization that feel that if they were laid off they have no skill set or experience, and they are right. Allow for more mentoring, especially if people are charging to overhead. Good luck.

Pros

-Flexible in taking PTO whenever you like
-There are a lot of young engineers to form a nice social group
-Close to home

Cons

-Ladder and ranking system to determine promotions and merit raises. Promotions and merit raises are determined in the previous year (ex: For 2010 year, ranking is determined Nov/Dec 2010) before performance reviews/summaries are written and conducted during (ex: For 2010, Feb 2011) for the previous year. Instead of making everyone's salaries the same, award the top performing employees better raises.
-Promotions seem to be based on years of service and seniority as opposed to rewarding those that worked hard that year.
-Raises kick in during May of the following year. This is way too late. Performance discussions need to be held earlier in the year and raises applied earlier in the year. Should not be later than February or March at the lastest in my opinion.
-Expand educational assistance to allow engineers to obtain MBA degrees. They are the only top 4 aerospace defense contractor to restrict employees to obtain MBA degrees.
-Poor transition to new programs when the current program is phasing out. I was on overhead for about a month before I was contacted to work on a new program. Section managers need to take more responsibility in finding new jobs in other programs and placing proper talent sooner.
-No sick days. What company doesn't have sick days nowadays. It is unfortunate that people have to take PTO when they are sick or come in the office sick.

Advice to Senior Management

-Determine and improve a new method for evaluating promotions and merit raises.
-Expand educational assistance for MBA degrees.
-Advise section managers to do a better job of looking after their employees and build the networking bridge for engineers to transition to other projects.
-Add sick days on top of the vacation allotted to account for some days when people are under the weather and not forced to use PTO.
-Need to look into holding performance discussions way earlier in the year so that raises kick in by February or March.

Pros

What makes Raytheon attractive is the variety in job positions it can offer when you can get it. Depending on the group you get in with it is the best as far as comradery.

Cons

Management has a hard time following through on promises to help promote job change within the company. Get pidgeon-holed into a position.

Advice to Senior Management

Create an environment where feedback by employees is actually taken seriously and used to improve efficiency both to the benefit of the employee and company

Pros

Flexible work schedule and good compensation

Cons

Promotion or compensation more based on tenure

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Pay - high
Flexability - 9/80 schedule
Smart people - most
Good People - most

Cons

Many mangers do not help you with Career advancement in Raytheon. You can feel like a contractor looking for work in a large matrixed org like this one. There are too many re-org's and managers swap out frequently.

Advice to Senior Management

Help employees advance thier career.

Pros

Salary can be decent if you negotiate it well when you hire in. Management is generally makes well thought out decisions. We strive to be the business leader in our industry. The people are generally easy to work with. We have a wider portfolio of programs than most other defense contractors.

Cons

They value time over knowlegde. A little annoying if you are young. Fun place to work for the most part. They will give you as much work or as little as you are able to handle. A couple of fellow young coworkers and I always said 25% of the people in this company do 75% of the work. The rest are just waiting to retire.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to keep salaries more competative. Once the economy gets better there will be a brain drane unless salaries increase. Overall good performance but process is not always the solution.

Pros

Excellent benefits, good work/life balance.

Cons

I found Raytheon to be elitist and cliquey, with a strong resistance to change. Managers genuinely wish to help, but are completely unable to because they are expected to work 75% (usually 100%) on programs. There is no support system when problems arise.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers need to be free to manage, empower them to do so.

Pros

Co-workers are intelligent and engaging. Many talented and smart people here.

Cons

Employees - most talented employees are underutilized or just overworked, and greatly unappreciated. You can get pigeon holed quickly by many managers.

Level 5 management - a joke. Same people, different management roles year after year, its like a giant pool of nepotistic dna with line level management.

Upper management - out of touch with reality. Couldn't be further removed from it than they are, almost like they have no original ideas and can only turn and run in the same direction other companies do - trend based management.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in fresh level 5 people, quit keeping the stale 20 year management people around and just putting them in different lateral positions. Quit following trends, especially the obvious ones that you end up going back on (like "outsourcing" until the contractors can't actually do the work).
Put more value in the talent you have, and allow people to have a more defining role in shaping their job duties.