Pros
Good starting salary. - The Bait Fairly secure except when considering the possible budget cuts coming due to sequestration. Not much responsibility, low expectations on performance and productivity, and laid back environment. Decent benefits.
Cons
After the starting salary, that's pretty much it except for the annual 3% (if you're lucky) raise. After being hired, people are often placed in departments and groups that they have no experience or education in. Fluids people end up in structures and structural people end up filling out reports and sitting on their hands. Poor management across the board. Directors and managers are more interested in making sure money is being spent than they are about whether anything is actually getting done. Also, just purchased a nice new facility which they refurbished into a complete disaster with way too many people for the number of bathrooms, parking spaces, and overall space. Promotions are based almost solely on how long you have been with the company. How good you are and how much more you accomplish than your peers means little to nothing. Raises are supposedly based on your yearly performance review, but there really isn't any rhyme or reason to what you get on either the performance review or the raise. Many engineering positions do little more than fill out paperwork with little or no technical work whatsoever. 90% of the technical work that is done could be accomplished by a second year engineering student. The older buildings that most people are in are in various states of disrepair and filled with black mold. People with respiratory problems have a lot of trouble. Union workers are generally lazy and difficult to deal with.
