Software Dev Experience at Boeing WA - Software Developer Boeing Employee Review

3.0
7 June 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Friendly people, good independent. Most of the time i've been allowed to take a project and run with it to completion with little oversight. It is fairly easy to become a subject matter expert within the company.

Cons

With the independence there are a lot of workers that do take advantage of the system. Boeing has sent a clear message that they don't care about their IT / Software Development skills or retaining talent with their rampant layoffs of the IT organization. The culture believes their competitive advantage is within improving "the process" not in the system architecture that runs "the process". Buying vendor commercial software and customizing it fit the companies needs is ingrained into the culture, even though the last couple decades have proved that is not a viable solution for their "superior" manufacturing process. Raises are nearly impossible to achieve on good merit. Advancement is pretty formulaic by the numbers of years at the company, even then it is no guarantee. It is common place for an easily justified upgrade to be postponed for years due to money mismanagement and their convoluted system of skill code pools and money allotment. Also, pay is abysmally low for software dev skills, as an employee with 1-5 years. However, management will always claim they are competitive if you look at the full package. This is a lie, there is no competition other tech companies are at least 30-50% more base pay with similar benefits. I would be cautious about accepting a software / IT job at Boeing, their current strategy is to "layoff" all expensive employees with this skill set and hire cheaper inexperienced labor in South Carolina. I suspect the company has about 3-4 years left of this cycle before the IT infrastructure will completely collapse. At that point the company will start to change its ways and bring more things in house while claiming a "cost savings".

Explore other reviews about Boeing

5.0
22 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits, good work, life balance, good leadership

Cons

Pay could be slightly better

3.0
27 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Easy going, nice benefits, free further education (masters/PhD). Great for an engineer starting out who needs to dip their feet in the pool of engineering for a few years and to get a great 401(k) match at the start of your career (compounding growth). Great for late stage career due to the benefits and solid enough pay in a low cost of living area

Cons

pay-scale lagging, no emphasis on learning new things, no punishment for people who are bad at their job. After working for 4 years, I feel like I should have jumped ship after 2. I haven't been given meaningful work that really challenges me in a while. Now I feel pigeonholed into staying because I have enough years of experience that I really should be considered senior, but I haven't been given work that reflects what I senior engineer should be capable of. Now I'm trying to jump ship before it's really too late. If I stay here another 2 years I think I will be genuinely unemployable and will have to stay at this company forever.

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