Ball Aerospace Reviews

As with any company- it's all about truly understanding your expectations, what motivates you and asking the right questions during the interview process to make sure the company is a good fit. Looking back on it- I was recruited by Ball Aerospace (my 3rd employer) at the "Experienced Professional"point in my career with a young and growing family. My expectation was that if I worked hard and delivered results, I would move up the chain relatively quickly and enjoy a share of the financial rewards (not unreasonable). I thought I asked the right questions during the interview process and the company was clear that I was being brought in part of their succession planning for future leadership so I thought this would be a great career move for me and my family. Turns out this is not necessarily the case (at least not in any time frame most ambitious employees would consider reasonable). Ball is all about 1) Time in grade and 2) Years of service. When it comes to compensation- It doesn't really matter what results you actually produce to help the company be successful (although expectations for performance are high) you are expected to, essentially, get in line and wait your turn. The company culture rewards those who've been loyal and stuck it out for 20+ years vs those currently making impacts to grow the business and deliver results (this was very difficult for me to finally accept). The pay was great coming in, but after that- you are looking at the standard 2-2.5% raise (one year was 1.7%) and maybe a promotion in 5 years or so- really nothing else. I was there for just short of 10 years and thoroughly enjoyed the teams and projects I worked on, but was continuously frustrated with the lack of upward mobility and compensation. I was continuously told I did a great job I did, 5/5 ratings on performance reports, etc. But was only promoted once (after threatening to walk out) at the ~5 year point. Had the company explained this culture to me at the start I probably wouldn't of accepted the offer (and left an otherwise good company). Bottomline: if you are a hard charger that delivers results and, in return, expects to move up quickly and provide a better life for your family in return (in less than 20 years), you may want to reconsider Ball Aerospace. Nothing above the standard 2% raise is given without a fight and promotions can be had if you've got one foot out the door. Bonus plan? Only for upper management, stock options- yeah right. A very frustrating way to manage talented employees. In the end, I simply grew tired of constantly "waiting for my turn". Advice to current employees: Shut up, get in line and wait your turn. If you can do that- you'll be successful. Advice to potential employees: If compensation and position are important to you- negotiate it upfront (and not just salary). Come in as high as you possibly can because once they've got you, it's pretty vanilla going forward. If Ball isn't meeting your expectations for position/pay/bonus now, they never will in the future. If your more motivated by work/life balance, or have dual incomes, or just want to work with cutting edge technology- Ball can be a great place to work. The company has integrity, delivers what it promises customers and has awesome technical talent. Again- know yourself and what really motivates you (which can changes over the course of your life/career).

The things that Ball Aerospace is not able to advertise is as follows. They are essentially transforming into a Westminster-based defense contractor. If you have dreams of working on cool space projects in Boulder, those are few and decreasing, despite that is most of what they advertise. BA’s growth area is defense, not space. 75-80% of their business is defense; 15-20% is in public space projects. The rest is “other”, such as training and support. Understand going into BA that the odds are that you will be working defense projects on their South campus (Broomfield and Westminster). BA is looking to move up the food chain from a component supplier to a prime that will be developing the entire system, like a Lockheed or a Northrop, and they are recklessly bidding for projects beyond their means to staff them. These changes lead to two different worlds within BA, and you can see this dichotomy in the reviews at Glassdoor. The minority of people at the Boulder locations on space projects are working on 5-7 year long programs with copious planning and management. Those folks give great reviews of BA. The majority of people are on defense programs with short 12-18 month schedules and very little planning, getting beaten up for cost and schedule, and ALOT of winging it. Most senior technical personnel are spread across 6 or more programs, and cannot adequately support the programs to which they are assigned. Folks are burning out over working in that environment, and it leads to the negative reviews. There is opportunity here in the churn if that is the kind of environment that you are looking for, but expect to be tossed about in the waves. Lastly, BA makes a big deal about people who have worked at BA for 25+ years, but that heralded culture is long gone. You are left with a split company with a wave of people retiring on the job and those relatively new folks scrambling in perpetuity to do what they think is right. There is definitely a male, old-boys-club atmosphere that you have to decide if you want to work with as well.