Calspan Reviews

Most of the company's employees, outside of the "executive team," are very demoralized. HR generally contributes this to a few disgruntled employees, but I'm really not exaggerating when I say almost all the regular employees there feel: overworked, treated poorly by upper management, are regularly in the dark about company management (company direction, decisions, etc), and almost always feel like they could be replaced/fired. The pay seems ok, but again, for how stressful it is to work there, it actually seems like it should be more. One of the biggest issues is that ever since the company laid-off nearly half of their staff in the mid-2000s, they brought in a new management team to make the company more profitable. This is understandable obviously, but the large disparity between the upper management and the employees continue to this day. The executives act like they run a billion dollar company, but never take advantage of the small-company feel they could use (since there are only about 200 employees total). As a result, the communication is very poor, people get laid off for minor offenses. The company is extremely frugal with even like an extra $50 or $100 here for equipment. However, the upper management enjoy all the paid for company perks they don't share with everyone below. As a result, many engineers experience the depressing reality that they can't get money to fund their work, while there does seem to be extra money laying around. The Niagara Falls hanger definitely seems to be the priority as the facilities, atmosphere, and funding appear to be better than the transportation testing department. Transportation engineers and assistant engineers consistently work 55 hour weeks due to the small staff and over demand (again, generated by the upper managements frugality). Bottom line: this company seems like a bank account for the owner and the execs. Take a job here if you really need one and start looking for an upgrade while you're working there.

Upper management does not care about their employees. I have heard one executive specifically say he is O.K. with employee turn over so they can continue to pay bottom dollar. Work environment is pretty toxic. They work you to the bone. There really isn't much room for professional growth since you are working hard non-stop and they never make it a point to allow you to learn. If you do somehow get promoted or change roles, your old role never leaves you. You will now be asked to do both roles for the same pay. Back filling your old position is not a concept they want to implement. Techs/Engineers can get promoted to managerial roles, but they aren't trained on how to be a manager and so they struggle in those new roles. There is really one individual who runs this company and is very old school. Does not believe in remote work and in their ideal world, everyone would be in the office 100% of the time. There is a bad sigma around "corporate" and you need to walk on egg shells around the executives all the time. HR preaches about family and "One Calspan", but then do nothing about employee retention. There is not much of a work/life balance. If you are salary, be prepared to work 50+ hours a week, every week. Be careful what you say in emails, teams, etc. because they are known to dig for things to fire employees over if you don't agree with them in everyway. They do not accept differing opinions. Good luck finding diversity at this place. Lets just say fox news is the preferred news channel in the breakrooms. There are two owners at Calspan and one of them is very nice, but the other is degrading and condescending. To this day, I don't think they care or know what their upper management teams are doing to the employees.