BAE Systems reviews

3.9

76% would recommend to a friend

(4,210 total reviews)
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Charles Woodburn

81% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

BAE Systems has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 4,210 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The BAE Systems employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Aerospace & Defense industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

4K reviews
4.0
Dec 24, 2015

Business Improvement Manager

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Work life balance Excellent people Supportive culture

Cons

Slow pace of change Compensation lower than market average

2.0
Dec 23, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most of my comments below relate to the NetReveal business unit which I was part of for a number of years. Large number of key clients in UK and worldwide. Good exposure early on (as a graduate) to key stakeholders at clients, and to contribute to projects. Ability to work with some great clients in banks, insurers, government, police, tax, etc. and to spend time client-side. Lots of clever people here.

Cons

Company has changed from being a really clever off-the-wall consultancy into a company with some standard products to trot out to every potential client. Company used to boast about their near 100% retention - staff turnover is now very high. Office perks (e.g. juice, fruit, kit kats) slowly being eroded bit by bit. Company socials much less frequent than they used to be. Uncompetitive salary. Hours can be brutal - expectation to pull out all the stops to ensure project delivery makes for some long nights. Security culture means everything is super locked down - e.g. don’t think about using Google Chrome as your browser! Overall strategy is a bit confused. Used to be a lot of duplication across clients doing very similar work. Recently there has been more of a drive to cut the rework i.e. sell software licences over services, turning the business unit into more of a mix of a consultancy and a software house. Consultancy but without the time and resources to do bespoke projects. A software house but without the right product development and testing, training or high-quality developers. Supposedly managed services are the way forward, but serious lack of knowledge on how to run these properly. Lack of innovation - same tired ideas being trotted out for the last 10 years. Very little exploration of new technologies Lack of understanding or desire to do agile development, or proper testing! - has led to a disgusting monolithic upgrade cycle for customers but also problems for consultants who don’t know anything about the new features, and need to be retrained Volume of work often does not correspond to resources. You can be super stretched on project one minute and then on the bench for 4 months if there’s no work around. Objective setting/line management used to be poor but has improved somewhat, but still feedback can be very infrequent, and review process is still very drawn out. Business is generally quite complacent as more competition joins the SNA market Hot desking not done well - people have desks for months at a time so it’s a weird crossover between hot desks and permanent desks - with the advantages of neither Senior management not well known, not visible on the ground

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BAE Systems Response
10y
Thank you for your feedback. I think we must have joined the company at about the same time and you're right, things definitely have changed. Our rapid growth has perhaps contributed to some of the points you have mentioned, we have grown from a UK based company with 1,500 staff to a company with over 4,500 staff in 19 different countries. Whilst some of the legacy office perks have gone, we have retained the free tea, coffee, fruit and KitKats, which our new joiners still seem to get excited about! I have passed your recommendations on to the relevant management team to help with their continuous improvement plan. Best of luck with your future role.
2.0
Dec 22, 2015

can be better

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good company to start out

Cons

Don't want to give mandatory raises, management can be better but when you're having a issue they sweep it under the rug and then start looking at you as a trouble maker

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