Vulcan Employee Reviews about "vulcan"

Pros

Smart colleagues who share their expertise and knowledge. Great medical benefits. Amazing philanthropic products.

Cons

Vague mission with no clear path in sight. Vulcan has become an extremely toxic environment in some departments. Don’t speak up with a differing idea or opinion than some leaders or be ready to leave. It’s counter to the lip service the org gives around strength in diversity of ideas. Promotions and opportunities are rarely based on merit but rather on favoritism and what you can do for your leader’s bonus. Inequities of workload vs title/level- not everyone is held accountable and to the same standard.

Pros

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. When people were interested in coming to work at Vulcan I told them, “It’s cool because you work on crazy stuff. It’s awful because you get to work on crazy stuff.” I worked on some crazy stuff. Drones and VR and machine learning. It’s a tech playground. It was great for my career to dabble in cutting edge technology. It makes people notice my resume. It forced me to think outside the box. I am grateful for my time at Vulcan.

Cons

I’m also very happy to have left. Vulcan lacks paying customers. Without that simple but powerful force, it is hard to keep a company pointed toward true north. In my five years in the tech department, it had about three name changes and 4-6 leadership changes. With each regime change I would feel a new sense of hope. “This guy (note: always a guy) seems like he understands business. He’s not just interested in creating a wacky invention, but he wants to make products for actual human beings.” Inevitably, users would fall to the wayside and we would ultimately build something for a white guy sitting in an ivory tower. While Mr. Allen had good intentions and creative ideas, he often wanted a cutting edge engineering solution to a big humanitarian problem. The non-engineering solutions were too dull. But the engineering solutions were often out of touch. One thing was consistent: the worker bees were passionate about making something amazing and functional. Similar to Mr. Allen, they wanted to make a big impact in people’s’ lives. They researched ways to make science fiction come to life. They are smart, kind, creative, sharing people. However, the people who get promoted spout empty promises. They strut in like Donald Trump, fabricating business models and customer needs. In some ways, it's hard to fault these leaders. When there is no business, then lying with flourish is the best way to personally survive. If they can’t be successful by making a sale, then success has to come from a bloated sense of self worth. In the last regime change, things have gone slightly differently. The customer we designed for was no longer Paul Allen but instead a nonexistent customer who wants futuristic products at a reasonable price. In trying to productize Paul’s ideas, they are taking something developed in a lab and trying to make it a commodity, underfunding any R&D that would maintain differentiation. Leadership isn’t taking a strong stance in any direction: - If it truly wanted to build products, it would expand the team size to function comparably to a competitor. Right now, teams of 2-10 people are trying to create a full scale business. - If it wanted to operate as a tech transfer office, it would partner with major companies. Instead, it keeps its tech development under wraps. - If it wanted to be a Google X, it would focus on R&D and build truly futuristic product prototypes and not worry about making a sale. Vulcan doesn’t know what it is. It never has. It always sat in a technological purgatory, partially because I don’t think Mr. Allen cared enough to commercialize. Without Paul Allen, it loses a leader that had a sci-fi imagination. That might be a good thing since his ideas never touched the ground. It might be a bad thing because there are no longer any ideas. Right now, it is trying to commoditize futuristic ideas for an imaginary customer. Best of luck.

Pros

Vulcan has many intelligent and competent employees. The downtown office location has stunning views of Seattle. I never get tired of the views! Benefits are pretty good, although the medical plans have been scaled back recently. The only plans available now are the consumer-driven HSA plans. Unique perks, such as movie night at the Cinerama. Vulcan has excellent party planners. Vulcan hosts a lot of employee parties, and they are very well done. Lastly, Vulcan has a Coke Freestyle machine that dispenses a wide variety of beverages. It is the highlight of working at Vulcan!

Cons

The culture at Vulcan is its chief con. The general culture is elitist and authoritarian, which is sadly ironic because Vulcan is desperately trying to brand itself as free-thinking, egalitarian, and collaborative. Unfortunately, it is largely the opposite. There is a very deep and rigid hierarchy at Vulcan. Executive management lives in fear of getting berated by the owner. That fear then gets passed down through all levels of management and then saturates the rank and file. Consequently, much of what the workers do is support their direct manager in preparing them to have a good story to tell when they get called out publicly by their own manager. So instead of doing what is best for Vulcan, employees often do what is best for their manager’s survival or career aspirations. Communication at Vulcan is very unidirectional; namely top-down. Do not expect to have healthy debate with your manager and see your feedback make its way up the reporting chain. You are essentially told what you need to deliver, when to deliver it, and to refrain from asking challenging questions. So essentially, creative thinking, reasonable discussion, and intelligent debate are informally suppressed in this culture. Vulcan tries hard to market itself as a flat, collaborative, startup-like environment, but it tries to achieve that aim through superficial means, such as redesigning the technology department's workspace by eliminating all offices. So if you work in technology, you work in a big room with small cubes, no privacy, lots of noise, and no place to store work related items. In other words, Vulcan has recently jumped onto the “open office” bandwagon. Much of what I say here is based on my perspective of having worked in technology for many years. There are some departments that are quite different. Some departments wield a lot of influence, and consequently, enjoy privileges not available to other departments. If you hire on to one of these departments, your experience may be a positive one. But it is this disparity among departments that is one of the greatest weaknesses about Vulcan culture. It is highly political, and who you know, or who you are, rather than what you do, that largely determines your experience at Vulcan. Cronyism, unfortunately, is a big part of work life there. Many employees in key positions are not reluctant to dole out special favors for their friends or their subordinates. This, I feel, damages the integrity of the organization. As I mentioned, Vulcan desperately wants to be like a startup. I have worked in Silicon Valley at a startup, and Vulcan is the antithesis of the startup culture. A startup company has a flat managerial hierarchy where there is a strong sense of shared purpose (and sacrifice). In contrast, Vulcan has an extremely high manager to employee ratio. That in itself is not necessarily a problem, but there are so many managers who are unwilling to perform work that they feel is beneath them. Many managers will not even schedule their own meetings or perform their administrative, and even managerial tasks. They have their administrative assistants do that work. This is why the low-rung workers are consistently overworked. There are lots of people with ideas, some of which are good, though mostly absurd, and not enough people to actually execute the work. Also different from the typical startup is the way that they treat I.T. employees. In a typical small technology company, the technologists are highly valued and their treatment reflects that attitude. At Vulcan, you are treated as a drain on cash. And because Vulcan does not generate much, if any revenues from technology, the tech workers essentially ARE a drain on cash. I.T. is treated as a necessary evil, so to speak. If you are looking for a technical position, just keep that in mind. You will likely be paid competitively, but do not expect a lot of respect from Vulcan management. Because of this general attitude by management, you can sometimes expect similar treatment from your internal customers. And do not expect your managers to back you when you need their support. As some other reviewers have mentioned, HR is not your advocate. Their primary objective is to keep the owner from getting angry. Secondarily, they strive to keep the C-level managers happy. At least this is the feeling that many people have. If you consult HR with a problem, their first thought is to protect the owner and the company, not the employee. Another reviewer recommended that you should hire a labor attorney if you accept a job offer. Unfortunately, I fully agree. That is all I can legally say on that topic. My advice to people contemplating employment at Vulcan. If you work in technology and you are sufficiently marketable, don’t waste a year or two testing the waters at Vulcan. You will likely be disappointed with the way you will be treated, relative to the other departments and companies. If you are desperate for employment, then take the job offer and “suck it up” like many of us here are asked to do. If you are not in technology, give Vulcan a try. You may end up in one of the premier departments and have a good experience. And one last “con”, in addition to the political culture. Telecommuting is not allowed, unfortunately.

Pros

Great Pay, diverse Ideas and Issues, great perks such as Movie nights, and sporting event tickets

Cons

Strange Hours, and moving goalposts when it comes to pleasing the only person that matters at Vulcan

Pros

Good pay and benefits, passionate people, incredibly rewarding work

Cons

Some mid level managers and directors are extremely cliqueish. Many have come from industries or companies where cut-throat techniques were the norm, and we don't need that at Vulcan. Being an abusive jerk might get you somewhere at Blue Origin or Microsoft or Space X, but it has absolutely no place at Vulcan. If you can't leave your ego at the door, go work somewhere else.

Pros

Vulcan is several orgs in one. It seems to be a good place to work if you work in operations (e.g. shipping, reception), admin support, divisions where there’s a clear profit motive (e.g. real estate, investment), and divisions run by executives who enjoy favor with the owner (currently government affairs, productions). I’ve gotten mixed signals about Aerospace. There is a collegial peer-to-peer culture at the professional and admin levels. People across the organization are willing to help you, even if they don’t know you well. The company has some fun perks, like free movie nights and generous Friday happy hours. Halloween is a lot fun.

Cons

Vulcan is an impossible place work if you work in areas that are subject to the whims of the owner (e.g. technology, philanthropy, productions) or divisions run by executives who have fallen out of favor with the owner (e.g. philanthropy, which turns over managers at the rate of about one per year). It's hard to convey to outsiders how chaotically and arbitrarily Vulcan is managed, and how permanent and unfixable that situation is. It helps to keep in mind that the company is really a multi-faceted personal services firm built around the interests of its owner, who is famously self-indulgent, unfocused and inscrutable. Executives live or die by their ability to discern and satisfy his wants, a skill that few master and fewer sustain for more than a few years. Professional staff live or die by their ability to help their executives satisfy those wants. “We serve at the pleasure of [the owner]” is an often-repeated office adage. There is much frustrated talent inside the company.