Jul 3, 2008
Lockheed Martin reviews
4.1
84% would recommend to a friend
James D. Taiclet
82% approve of CEO
73% positive business outlook
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Lockheed Martin has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 14,563 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Lockheed Martin 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
15K reviews
4.0
Jun 15, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
The best reason to work for LMT are the projects we do. You can't work on the kinds of things that you do here anywhere else. Want to work on Manned Space Flight, Planet exploration or an important defense project... this is the place. The technical challenges are tougher than anywhere else I've worked. The sense of purpose is also stronger than anywhere else. It's important to realize too that LMT is really hundreds of companies under one name (the product of 20 years of M&A). If you feel stuck or don't like the culture at a particular position and you work in an area where LMT has a couple of different operations you can move on, and often find a very different experience somewhere else. That sort of flexibility is really nice. Finally pay is good, benefits are excellent, and paid vacation is excellent. Flex work schedule is also excellent. If you just look at the pay you're not going to be blown away. But remember that generally overtime is paid even for salaried positions, which means you work less of it, and when you do you get paid.
Cons
I once tried to count how many levels there were between me and our CEO and I came up with 11. I've never met our CEO. Keep in mind what I wrote in "best reasons" which is when you work for LMT you're really working for one of the hundreds of companies that LMT M&A'd in the last 20 years, with easy mobility between companies and a uniform set of pay/benefits and schedule. This creates to put it mildly a political and beauracratic challenge. Want to get good a negotiating a beauracracy... this is the place for you. I suspect many jobs have this challenge but I'm guessing it's more acute at LMCO. The other chief downside is the cyclical nature of our work. To survive here you have to realize that you are a contractor, and you are selling your services to a project. When the contract goes away (and it will, and it may go away at a senator's whim) you need to quickly find the next contract. Lockheed is supportive, but it's still nerve-racking knowing that you have an expiration date at the end of a project.
2.0
Jun 12, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
As a large company, you have the freedom to move around between a lot of different projects, and this is actually very encouraged (as far as corporate policy goes). They're fair about these transfers, too - they like to stay in one place for a reasonable amount of time before going to another group, but otherwise no one can really stop you from doing the kind of work you want (provided it's available and you've got the skills for the job). They're also very aware, as a corporation, about their poor retention of young workers and engineers, and act accordingly by encouraging mentoring, sponsoring affinity groups for networking opportunities, and funneling strong talent into development programs.
Cons
Young talent flees for good reasons - the pay, when compared to other companies in Silicon Valley, is regarded as below par. The most talented engineers, if they come straight out of school, tend to leave within the first 5 years for greener, more profitable pastures. The result, whether senior management recognizes it or not, is that in the middle ranks there's a huge dual-peak spread of abilities. If your manager is stellar, chances are she was bright, talented, and got just enough experience to be able to ascend quickly and do a great job. If not, she's probably just a rather mediocre person who happened to have enough seniority and institutional memory to be promoted. And the manager you get is just luck of the draw. Additionally, the size of the corporation is a double-edged sword; even though you can work on a lot of things, chances are good you'll feel like a cog in a sporadically well-oiled machine. Furthermore, many of the projects are "legacy" projects that stifle innovation, or new ones that get tied up in political (read: government funding) knots for ages. Both cases make it difficult for an engineer to enjoy his or her job. Lastly, LM retains a certain amount of "boys' club" atmosphere. While this is of course frowned upon by corporate, this environment permeates throughout, more so than in younger companies. If you're a young woman, I'd be wary - not for sexual harassment reasons, but gender/pregnancy discrimination ones.
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