| Sr. Principal Systems Engineer |
This location is a former TI-Defense organization. The "Raytheon
culture" had not permeated that location at the time I was RIFed. It
has an older employee population where in 2002 60% of the engineering
base was eligible for retirement! The aggregate populace there placed
too much value on whether or not you were a former TI employee. If you
transferred from another "Raytheon" (e.g., historical Raytheon, E-
Systems, Hughes) company, most of the employees treated you as something
less than worthwhile. They will transfer you when they have a pressing
need, but otherwise (and afterwards) there is no interest in you. It
was even worse if you had spent time with one of the other aerospace
companies. One would think that parallel experience obtained from one
any of them would have value to your employee. In my expereine that was
always true, except at a former TI organization.
Also, the way the engineering structure is set up at McKinney you
basically belong to the programs, which are organizaed along business
lines. The so-called Engineering Organization is basically useless to
the employee, existing seemingly for its own purpose simply on an org
chart. They had great office space though. This really means that
there is no one looking out for your interests as an employee. You live
and die by the programs (and in this case the TI chauvinism as well).
In 2002 this site RIF'ed hundreds of people based on questionable
criteria, but they made sure no one could prove it. What they published
as the criteria passed the legal test, but the actual criteria was
something else. After the RIF anyone who attended the outplacement
facility paid for by Raytheon (conducted by Lee Hecht Harrison) could
see patterns quite easily. If you were less than pleasant to look at,
had a speech impediment, someone originally from Asia, had come from
another company (legacy Raytheon or otherwise) or had enough going for
you that you were a threat to your supervisor, etc., you were in the
RIF. All of the RIFed people I observed over three months at the center
were either of Caucasian or Asian descent, and almost all were male.
Quotas for diversity and other minorities had an obvious impact on who
got nominated for the cut. I truly believe that if Raytheon senior
management had simply attended the mandatory orientation at the
outplacement center they would have had some clear and quite telling
insight about the character of their McKinney management team.
Yes, they are downsizing, and that is because they have not won any
significant new business for about five years. And I suspect that trend
will continue. Most new work McKinney gets is extension of existing
contracts to build a few more missile launchers, some avionics pieces or
some spare parts here and there. Other work comes as handouts from
other Electronics Systems companies, such as the former Lewisville TI
missile group now in Arizona or the former Hughes group in El Segundo.
No new significant engineering work, just assembly line and spare parts
activities mostly.
The only change that happens at this location is that which is forced on
them by corporate or the customer. For that reason, they have made some
pitiful attempts to promote females into senior positions, and add color
diversity to "get the numbers in line." So some easy and early
promotions for people not quite experienced enough to really qualify for
their job, or who did not really have the necessary people skills, etc.
That, along with the program "ownership" of the people circumstance
created a lot of poor working relationships for individual contributor
engineers. A person with professional integrity and personal self-
respect seemed like a target for some of these folks, and they regulary
caused you to be in circumstances where you had to compromise those
qualities way too often just to stay on their "good side."
When it comes to working for Raytheon, you need to be do your research
on the legacy of the company that is making the offer. Some parts of
the original Raytheon in the NE are OK, but not all, and I strongly
recommend staying away from any former TI group (for at least 15 years
if they survive that long). If you start with one of those locations
out of college, after a few years you are just about assured of being
useless to other companies who have a true engineering enterprise
approach where technology, methods, tools, quality and process have real
meaning and value (and generally work with community accepted practices,
processes and tools). The former TI organizations have a lop-sided
population of engineers with over 30 years of in-bred experience and
dated education (makes you wonder about the reasons they don't win new
business, doesn't it), a good bunch of college new-hires (to get the
salaries down and the diversity quotas up) but little in between. And
it would most likely continue to be nothing more than a retirement farm
for TI engineers if not for the forced activity from Dan Burhnam and
others at corporate.
Anyone who thinks this information is sour grapes or anything of that
nature, and are thinking of working for them, should invest some time,
do their research and ask some seasoned former employees to get their
take. It's a situation ripe for a Jerry Springer show.
It is a good thing really that I was RIFed as I got my personal dignity
back and with time I will heal the damage to my professional and
technical skills for the time spent there. If anyone is interested in
working for aerospace companies, whether new to the workforce or not,
look somewhere else. Lockheed Martin (who smokes Raytheon on new
business acquisition), Northrop Grumman and BAE are much better
choices...with just the caveat to stay away from the airplane building
companies of those enterprises. Otherwise, these companies understand
the value of the employee inherently, and they practice accordingly.
You can expect to work on the latest programs and use state of the
practice technologies, tools and processes. If you work for one of them
for 5 years you will learn valuable and resuable experience that the
rest of the community could appreciate if you need a need job later.
Work for Raytheon and you are definitely gambling with your professional
career (and will have to learn to suffer with low self-esteem).
Dan, you really need to do a lot more.
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