The Engineer's Tale - Engineer Woodward Employee Review

Antiquated Leadership Style Mostly conservative Business Management Weak Career Development Middle to Lower of Pay Range for the Area The Business Culture Upper level leadership tends to hire middle management that conforms to their thinking methods leading to nepotism and a group thinking culture. Upper leadership is typically unwilling (sometimes insulted) to be challenged by technical and industry experts. This behavior manifests as hubris and arrogance. Technical experts are frequently undermined by upper management’s subjective (limited data driven) decision making processes and typically leads to frustration by the working membership. Short sided thinking (e.g. lopsided cost saving mentality vs. investment mentality) becomes the norm due to the inability of management to clearly stick to any long term, substantive strategic plan. Additionally, high levels of leadership rarely communicate the strategy effectively, and with no mechanisms for the membership to voice concerns (let alone participate in) or get better resolution on the strategic plan (e.g. business checks and balances, explicit low level metrics), makes for a culture of little management accountability. As the business culture continues this way unchallenged, reactionary decision making takes precedence over long term thinking. Progressive thinking “change agent candidates”, be aware of this cultural behavior when considering employment. Learning and development, Over the years the company has grown substantially. In its wake (as many call it growing pains), I see it as a company that has outgrown the leadership core’s skills sets. The core functions of the organization instilled with an archaic form of management, consistently struggles to perform up to the CEO’s visionary goals. The CEO seems out of touch with the inner workings of his organization relying on an old school and flawed, vertical reporting system. The man seems very intelligent from folklore, but very seldom addresses the general population let alone takes time to connect with folks below VP levels which makes it hard to establish confidence in his leadership. When the primary performance metric is stock price growth, it’s hard to argue with this metric, however, I view it as being at the cost of neglect of the workers well-being. In my experience stock price has a weak connection to job satisfaction. I don’t believe its greed driving this behavior, rather, the CEO has not driven any cultural growth metrics or put in any leader incentives to drive a more progressive working environment. The behavior drives a hypocritical cultural feel where individual leaders will agree with member concerns in private, but then proceeds publicly to passive-aggressively maintain or even preserve the status quo perhaps out of shame, job security, or they simply agree with the way it is. Career development There is currently no technical leadership position equivalent (e.g. peer level) to upper management. This structure gives upper management the majority of the leverage in decision making processes and allows discretionary authority over all internal policies including technical decisions. This management structure inhibits growth potential both for employees seeking internal job placement and ability for the business to adapt to changing market conditions because talent is “land-locked” into specific job roles. Although internal training and tuition assistance for Master’s/PhD studies exists, the lack of a supportive career development business structure severely limits one’s potential to move across departments or business groups. Coupled with a severely limited authority/budget in Human Resources, managers that are willing to help employees cross-functionally train cannot justify the costs to upper management and are therefore stifled. A huge hole in the Learning and Development area is a lack of funding that supports functional training programs (e.g. technical classes/coursework). Much if not all of the budget goes toward C-suite initiatives that have seemingly marginal effectiveness. If the leadership communicated the measurable effectiveness of the company wide training I could be persuaded otherwise, but this has never happened. Wages and Benefits The company benefits by retaining talent and inhibiting wage growth due to a lack of direct local competition for talent. This makes it hard for individuals to seek other employment locally and may need to look south for higher wages. The city is a fantastic place to raise a family and the local culture is friendly and inviting. Benefits are good and probably better than most. The work-life balance is typically in check, but the culture is driven as a “do whatever it takes” mentality and can be costly if you don’t challenge the pressure. It is fine by most to have surges when necessary, however too often than not, poor planning and unrealistic time schedules make it difficult to get out of this rut. I believe a more inclusive leadership would benefit by using input from internal industry experts to alleviate this issue and could adapt.