Overall a good company to work for, but starting pay is low for the CoL
Pros
- Learned a lot about the industry - Some travel and overtime opportunities - Good benefits (except PTO) and they even pay your health deductible - Flexible work hours, and you can go to an appointment or even take a day off without notice - They will pay "up to $1000" of travelling expenses for relocation. It cost me like $1100 to move out there and they paid the full amount though. - No "red tape," engineers are pretty free. But that's a double-edged sword. - No drama, everybody seems to get along quite well and I liked all of my coworkers. I liked the company culture. - The work can be pretty cool. Building giant robots and stuff.
Cons
- Lots of boredom/downtime - Not allowed to WFH even if you're only doing computer work for the day - 40 hours is required, even if you have nothing to do and you've done plenty of work for the day/week. I spent plenty of time on Reddit/etc because there just was not enough work for me to do and they won't even let you submit your timesheet with less than 40 hours. If you leave to go to an appointment for an hour, you are expected to work an extra hour to make up for it. - Lots of time spent filling out purchase orders, filling out your time sheet, etc - They were unwilling to give a relocation bonus. When I asked for one they just reiterated that they would pay up to $1000 for travel costs. So instead I had to put thousands of dollars on credit to furnish my apartment and get everything I need out here (since they won't compensate enough to get your stuff moved). - Starting pay is pretty bad for the cost of living. I started at $70k which I thought was pretty good, until I realized that rent is like $1800 for a 1br and *everything* is more expensive. They do raises at 6mo, but if you're not adamant about getting compensated fairly you will probably not get compensated fairly. One of my coworkers was making $70k over a year after starting. - Lots of work related to the military. This is mainly why I quit, I don't like supporting violence. I probably would have stayed if this weren't a factor, though I would have demanded at least $85k and 3 weeks PTO and if they didn't provide that I would have quit because the compensation wasn't adequate for the CoL. - There is basically 0 management. When you start you will be paired with a more experienced EE who basically becomes your manager, giving you tasks and projects to work on. This is fine except for the fact that their experienced EEs are spread pretty thin and don't have the time to effectively manage other employees, so there's a lot of the time where you're doing nothing but other EEs are swamped and just can't easily hand over work. - High turnover for new employees. I was there about 7 months and 2 of the EEs (which is like 20% of the EEs...) quit during that time. I would be the third, but I know that another EE was actively looking for a new job too. In the interview they told me their average tenure is like 12 years... but I soon realized that was mostly because the newer EEs quit within a year for better pay and better PTO, and they're not counting ex-employees in their calculation. I just want to say that I did like working for this company and I don't want to just put them on blast, but there are definitely some things that need to be fixed.
