Everything Wrong With Corporate America - Engineering Specialist General Dynamics Land Systems Employee Review

Let's face it: GDLS was never a great place to work, but it used to be easy to get used to the random car searches, the endless management fads (quad charts anyone?), and the slow-moving, change-adverse, death-by-meeting culture. These aren't the only problems any more. What was once just a mediocre employer has slowly become a terrible employer. And it's only getting worse. First off, forget about having steady, long-term projects. The company is organized in a feudal fashion, with multiple sections performing the same function in different organizations. This year’s nonsensical re-org just made this worse. Sectional battles over funding are fairly common, and you’ll frequently have to keep a running tally of what you can (and cannot) tell other groups due to inter-departmental cold wars. Unless you’re lucky enough to work for a group that has a constant stream of income, expect to spend part of your time playing salesman to bigger groups - and fighting off the other “guppies.” Should your section run out of work, you’ll be loaned out to a different group, which places you into inter-departmental limbo and can kill your career. However, the biggest problem at GDLS at the moment - and one that seems to get worse week after week - is the excessive micromanagement, reporting, and metrics you’ll be responsible for. The most visible - and loathed - face of this is the omnipresent time card system. You’ll also be expected to publish multiple metrics and reports on your tasks. This gets worse, as you'll frequently have anywhere from 2-3 bosses (more if you’re on loan), each of whom want to take credit for what you're working on and expect your reports in a different format, thus doubling or tripling your report workload. The company also seems to be moving to a "quantitative, not qualitative" review process. It doesn't so much *what* you accomplish; on the other hand, *how many* forms you submit in accordance with your departmental process has a large influence on your review score. Not that it matters much in the long run, as the number of promotions handed out recently seems to been reduced to a trickle. Another quirk of life at GD are the not-uncommon mandatory overtime binges that the company (which gets to charge its customer for your time) uses to pad the bottom line when sales are down. While some employees get paid overtime, it’s locked at $25/hour, a rate which hasn’t changed in decades. You’ll also be forced to work OT regardless of whether or not you’re late on your projects. The current OT binge is also contributing to the low morale at the company, as the only work the company has is being “burnt” at an accelerated rate, and there doesn’t appear to be anything on the horizon to take its place. This usually means layoffs. As expected, the company's IT policies are suitably draconian. You’re forced to use Lotus Notus, which is dreadful piece of software. The company also has Notes set to force-delete your email after a month. They at least warn you now when a mass delete is coming - when they first rolled this out, they silently deleted your email. GDLS also uses Smartfilter to block vast majority of the web, then sticks a cigarette in the wound by adding a custom - and frequently nonsensical - list of blocked sites above and beyond Smartfilter’s. If you try to access a blogspot entry about a particular algorithm, a research paper hosted on a foreign server, or - heaven forbid - parts of National Semiconductor's website (not kidding), you're out of luck. Even the so-called benefits are really just smoke and mirrors. Most people were told upon starting with the company that they had 10+ days of sick/personal. However, in certain groups you will lose points on your performance review if you dare to use more than two of those days. GDLS also claims to offer Flex Time, but their bizarre definition of "Flex Time" means starting at the same time every single day. This spawned a recent corporate crusade is to find and flush out those who aren't starting at their predetermined time, as well as those who don't take their mandatory 45 minute lunch break (no more, no less!) Just remember that your actual experience will vary wildly depending where in the company you wind up. The old-timers will tell you the company frequently goes through periods of protracted awfulness, and now happens to be smack-dab in the middle of one. You may not have many other options for employment in the Detroit area, but you’ll probably want to wait for the company to swing back towards “tolerable” before seeking a job here.