Pros
The benefits and pay are decent. Most people that work at the company are easy to get along with. The company is stable, or at least has been traditionally. There is no longer a pension, but that is pretty typical across most private companies currently. In terms of overall compensation, I would rate Solar on the upper end of the spectrum (for an engineer) in the San Diego region. -401k for salaried employees - 6% matching and an additional 3-5% based on age/time at solar -Vacation starting at 3 weeks/year -Holiday shutdown - Xmas to New years off, although this comes with the pricetag of various typical holidays throughout the year being work days (veterans day, etc) -flexible work schedule (generally) - employees get to work anywhere between 5 - 9am, or later -Bonus - targeted at 8% of annual pay, ranging from 0 - 16%. Both Cat and Solar financial performance affect payout, no personal performance modifier.
Cons
Industry: Market outlook is questionable. Solar makes gas turbines and other associated equipment. The outlook for the gas turbine industry is supposed to be good for the short to mid term, tapering off long term due to renewables, newer technologies, regulation, etc. With the 2015-16 oil bust, Oil & gas Capex is way down, dragging turbine sales with it. Will it come back? If it does, how long will it be back for? If both the short term and long term outlooks are negative, what then? Another trend in the industry is scale. Turbines are getting larger, which is forcing Solar to play in unknown markets and technologies already established by the larger manufacturers, ie Siemens and GE,. and all of their subsidiaries, putting Solar at a disadvantage. Some of the recent acquisitions in the past few years, passed up by Cat/Solar, have reduced opportunities further. Caterpillar- Cat is a three legged stool of Mining, Construction, and Power Generation (where Solar is). If any of these three are down, there will be cost cutting and consolidation. Company: Lack of opportunities for training or learning of industry trends, technologies, external to Solar. Cost cutting measures are applied across any and all segments, resulting in reduced budgets for R&D, travel, training, etc. Lean manufacturing is great, applied to products, but applying lean principles to your people results in an inadequately trained workforce. Training and development opportunities inside Solar are lacking in general, tribal knowledge is the name of the game. Lack of technical development is a partial result from turning techs & mechanics into engineers in Solar's past, resulting in a culture of low engineering expertise and ownership. Processes and documentation of everything slows work to a crawl. Software the company uses is needlessly complicated/flawed/patched together, resulting in a multitude of steps just to complete one task. Endless review meetings and approvals for work from dozens of stakeholders means nothing is ever cleanly completed. The politics and nepotism that are mentioned in other reviews is true. Supervisors have enormous control over their employees' prospects for promotion or advancement. Solar needs to develop a strategy to be successful 20 years from now, in addition to this year and the next. Watch what is happening to the coal industry very closely. Natural gas, sooner or later, right or wrong, will be next. Almost all of Solar's competitors are diversified across the entire energy & power generation spectrum.
