- Flexible Hours - there is no guarantee anyone you may need to talk to will come in at the same time you do, making collaboration difficult.
- The "EI" way is as follows: New hires are typically clueless grads who have no idea what to expect in a working environment. These new engineers are the technician work force that runs operations. Why hire engineers instead of technicians? Because it is cheaper and prevents the aerospace machinists union from getting traction at EI. Starting engineer salaries are less than the average laborer salaries in the Seattle area.
-Most of the claims made during my interview process did not come true:
"Nobody pays $70,000 starting salary in Seattle, maybe on the east coast they do" - Straight from the CEO during my interview. In reality, they do.
"The raises are good" : This data is made public at EI, and it takes on average 5 years to get up to a median starting salary for the Seattle area.
"Profit sharing makes up for the low pay" also takes 3-5 years before you will get anything. Supposedly raises are based on a formula driven by the scores your manager gives you, but they are very loosely linear - IE your raises are not tied to your performance, but the whims of the CEO.
"you can switch projects if you don't like the one you are on" Not true in my experience.
"We have a flat management structure" My experience was that you will just have an untrained and ineffective manager.
"the work is interesting" There is no guarantee of doing any engineering work starting out. I saw people with 10+ years at the company still doing low level work. This cripples your chances of advancing your career by switching to a different company. Who will want to hire a mid-level engineer with 5 years of experience as a technician? No one.
- There is no investment in new employees - since everyone here is an engineer, you are completely expendable. You will train yourself to do whatever menial task you are given, rather than getting any valuable engineering knowledge.
- There is no incentive to collaborate or be professional.
