Westinghouse Reviews

Pros

Lots of change and challanges, always an area to improve

Cons

So many changes that it is often difficult to complete and focus on job at hand, long hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce change to allow the business to adapt and improve

Pros

Benefits better than most, but they're cutting back.

Cons

Promotion by who you know, not ability

Advice to Senior Management

A company that never seems to be able to fix its ongoing issues.

Pros

The people at Westinghouse are extremely nice. Everyone is very professional, no politics whatsoever, at least in the area I work in. If there is an issue, it is easy to bring it to the table and management will work with you to get it resolved.

Cons

Long hours. While working from home and time off is flexible and allowed, working hours can be a lot.

Pros

- Great pay (for interns at least).
- My immediate supervisors were great mentors.
- Very nice facilities at the new HQ building.
- Toshiba, the parent company, is well managed.
- Westinghouse CEO Aris Candris is quite personable and is an effective administrator.

Cons

- The amount of work is rather spotty at times as compared to when I first started there a few years earlier.
- One year, they were hiring like nobody's business. A few years later, the layoffs started back up after major budget overruns in some projects.
- I guess this is to be expected as an intern, but it is way too hard to get noticed by anyone aside from your immediate supervisor.

Advice to Senior Management

Some of the red tape needs to get dialed down a few notches, and there needs to be better communication amongst the various layers of management. Also... why so many meetings?

Pros

Good benefits, salary, good industry experience, nice work environment. Paid overtime.

Cons

There is some seriously poor planning that goes on which makes every issue that comes up a crisis, and it doesn't have to be. More than one department will be working on the same problem. Once you think you have it squared away, the inputs change, and you have to start from scratch. This will happen several times. All this makes for lots of opportunities for overtime.

Advice to Senior Management

More conversation between departments. Better planning and prioritizing.

Pros

It is a large company with a lot of resources. Additionally, they just built a new headquarters in Cranberry, PA that is extremely nice.

Cons

Sometimes you can become disconnected from what the overall function of the company is. For example, you work on some small part or process without much sight to what the overall output is.

Advice to Senior Management

I thought that the management I dealt with was good. They got work done, yet maintained a friendly atmosphere among people in the department.

Pros

Westinghouse provides a very friendly work environment. The Cranberry faculty is beautiful. It has an amazing cafateria as well as great job stability

Cons

Westinghouse is seems to have several meetings to get even the smallest amount of work done. it can be very frustrating.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more progressive. Get more out of each employee and stop throwing more bodies at the same problems. Keep looking forward

Pros

Good pay.
Good work/family balance policies.
Company is going through a large growth period.

Cons

Lots of veteran employees (old guys) who are stubborn in their old ways and do not even consider new ways of doing things.
They nuclear industry in general is a victim of lots of politics.

Advice to Senior Management

Do not sign on to commitments to the customer that we can not meet.
Force different departments to help each other.

Pros

plenty of benefits at a reasonable price including medical, dental, and vision. also a savings plan, 401k, and wellness center onsite. tons of engineers and other technical professionals to learn from when beginning your career

Cons

very few openings compared to the number of employees who would like to move up in the company. mainly men, lots of whom are pushing retirement or speak little english. younger engineers can be brushed aside by some managers, but i guess you could have that anywhere.

Advice to Senior Management

take time to work with the younger engineers and teach them the history behind technical designs. Often times, there is a lack of effort on the management side to ensure that knowledge is not lost upon the retirement of technical leaders.

Pros

-Strong established comapny
-Great emphasis on innovation
-Too much "jumping through hoops" to get anything done
-Post-grad education funding
-Great new office complex

Cons

-Engineers are expected to do only engineering.... getting an MBA is something you really have to beg for
-too technical for what I was looking for