Pros
Good salaries for engineering roles and generous bonus once you reach management level (dependant on company performance). Management car scheme is generally very good Interesting products with lots of opportunities to work with/on new technologies Opportunities to move around the business and work in different departments and areas Lots of training available, covering everything from communication skills and general business behaviours to detailed engineering subjects Generally good work/life balance although this can be very dependent on your position/manager/department Lots of investment in new products and improvements to sites and infrastructure
Cons
Totally chaotic with a complete inability to plan further ahead than the next week. The majority of projects do not have proper plans or schedules. Too focused on reviewing costs without any understanding of the engineering solutions that are driving said costs. Costs are often reduced on senior management whim without any sound rationale as to how the reduction can be achieved or how the project/product will be delivered with reduced investment Significant numbers of the management community exhibit poor and outdated business behaviours, which is ironic given how much emphasis the annual review process and interviews give to good business behaviours Culture is very reliant on who you know rather than what you know. This can favour the politically savvy rather than the genuinely capable Very little thought given to business processes. What processes do exist are outdated, inefficient and poorly documented. There is a culture of bypassing processes and, as a result, every project and department operates in a slightly different manner. This only adds to the general chaos. Silo mentality and culture between departments. Each department protects its own interests. Departments often expend more time and resource blaming each other for problems, rather than working together to find solutions. This can be particularly frustrating if you work in an area of the business responsible for integration Meeting based culture means that many people spend the majority of their working week in meetings, leaving very little time to actually do real work. Meetings often duplicate one another. Unrealistic deadlines are regularly set by senior management, resulting in work being submitted which is incomplete of incorrect. This often results in tasks being completed multiple times, inevitably taking longer than if a realistic deadline had been set in the first instance. The matrix based organisation means that the decision making hierarchy is unclear. Every issue, no matter how trivial, requires the involvement and buy-in of numerous individuals which slows progress. Decision making responsibility is not delegated meaning that the majority of decisions are made at a senior level. This creates two issues. Firstly, many senior managers seem incapable of making decisions and just request more information. Secondly, many lower grade employees feel little job satisfaction due to the limited impact they appear to have on the final outcome. Engineering and project management can feel very amateurish. Little documentation is produced and that which is produced, regularly lacks precision. Many topics are investigated multiple times due to the fact that the first investigation or decision was not documented.