The buracracy is real - C++ Developer CAE Employee Review

CAE has been an incredibly supportive place to build a career. Leaders genuinely invest in your development, and there’s a strong culture of learning, collaboration, and trust. I’ve always felt empowered to bring ideas forward and take on new challenges. The company cares about its people, provides flexibility when it matters, and creates an environment where you can grow personally and professionally. Proud to be part of this organization.

The company is evolving fast, which is good—but change can be emotionally challenging for teams navigating uncertainty.

I don't have to work there anymore.

- CAE is trying to get bought out, so they are leaning into defense and chopping other areas. - They are banking on AI being able to do everything (they have no clue how subsidized AI currently is and are going to have to do more layoffs to afford the amount of AI they have implemented when tokenization comes for them). The buy-in is so heavy it borders on psychosis. They practically had the lunch lady and the janitor in AI training meetings trying to create their own agents for some reason. - From the tales before my own, layoffs happened really often and at random, shocking, disturbing, and overwhelming those who were left. - Their eyes are WAY too big for their stomach. They gobbled up so many smaller companies in the industry and then didn't know what to do with the talent they brought on board. Also squandered the resources they purchased. They have a set of priorities and quantity is on the list. Quality is missing entirely. - New CEO is trying very hard, for some reason, to sound dippy and flighty. He is not your friend. Remember that no management is your friend, no matter how "in the trenches" they claim to be with you. - "Flex" vacation scheme is an absolute ripoff unless you are smart enough to milk them for every day you can convince them to let you take off. Take all you can get because NO vacation payout if they lay off/fire you. - End of employment was demeaning and insulting. Just like other roles, HR seemed overwhelmed and couldn't take the workload of the layoff because they neglected to send out information, there were errors in the severance document, and they apparently didn't have anyone remaining who knew how to arrange the pages in a PDF. They were late to their own meeting laying people off, by the way. Anyone who had the illusion of feeling valued lost that within the span of three minutes. - It is feast or famine: Everyone is either overloaded with work and stressed out, or they are bored and disappear from the office to go do whatever and you don't even notice because you're so busy. - They are constantly trying to game their own internal employee metrics (switching up survey methods/platforms, constantly blasting employees with surveys and solicitations for feedback so much that you're overwhelmed or stop bothering, employee "talent" self-review time every 6 months) to try to make it look like they have positive relationships with staff. It felt like justification for adding "benefits" we didn't ask for instead of raising pay.