Toxic Culture - Project Manager General Dynamics Electric Boat Employee Review

Software tools are decades behind most industry...and...most government (e.g., no electronic workflows to coordinate and document reviews/approvals of documents). Many facilities are like a time-warp to the 1970s and 1980s, but with the decades of filth and wear and tear impossible to overlook. Extraordinarily inefficient -- no incentive to gain efficiencies as inefficiencies increase billable hours to the government. EB is nearly a monopoly, definitely a monopsony and these are notoriously inefficient, at best, anywhere. If you are at all familiar with commercial practices the archaic approaches & infrastructure at EB will appall you. As a taxpayer you will be doubly appalled realizing how GD-EB is bilking the Govt, your tax dollars, for every nickel and dime way they can with pervasive inefficiencies. EB is incentivized to be inefficient in this regard. Not the kind of environment that one is proud of. But, still for a while, there are many people with 30 and 40 years with the company, they do not know how far the rest of the world has passed this twisted economic bubble by. That's another source of inertia to modernization. As they retire, and the young talent continues is mass exodus, the loss in corporate "tribal knowledge" does not bode well for this company's long-term prospects. Unlike many of the bemoaned trends in the company that have persisted for decades, this loss of talent from both ends of the company's talent pool (see below about the young talent's exodus) is unprecedented and the efforts to 'do something about it' appear impotent. Managers do not make decisions, committees do. Rarely is there an accountable person in charge. Getting anything accomplished commonly requires interdepartmental bullying to browbeat other groups to do their job. There are certainly exceptions, but overall this is very very common. And, the specific problem areas are very well known. See above for why this is permitted to persist. And persist it does. Many toxic and disruptive managers, some with a well-known reputation throughout the company; so dysfunctional that in other companies the behaviors routinely exhibited would never be tolerate beyond once. Yet they are retained. Sure, some are good at their core jobs and do contribute, but they still leave a trail of wreckage and apathy in their wake. Many victims of such abusers creatively slow-roll their productivity on projects associated with these disturbed people. The internal "core values" website is seething with tales of such woe and misery, along with performance appraisal processes tainted by bias and favoritism. Pages after pages..... Some divisions have 100 percent, or nearly so, turnover of new engineers every three to five years -- long enough to gain some experience and then move on better paying jobs where all facets of employment are "better." Those that stay do so for a variety of reasons, with one obvious being family ties to the local area; one's coworkers include numerous extended families. Politics is bad enough in any large glacial organization, EB takes it to a new levels with nepotism. Be prepared. Salary employees "punch a clock." Really. They get paid full hours for 40 hr weeks, or 60 hr weeks... but get docked if during a pay period they work less than 40. Overtime is expected, but "comp time" is unheard of. The dis-incentivising effect is exactly what one expects: People work less ("if the minimum wasn't good enough it wouldn't be the minimum") and salary people "watch the clock" just like the hourly. In the nice newish building where the senior managers, including the Program Manager of the future COLUMBIA submarine resides, are some displays showing off some design innovations. This one sums up just how archaic even the engineering is: A curved pipe at a sharp turn is one of a handful of displays ballyhooed as among the major EB design innovations -- a curved pipe connected by two straight fittings at its ends in place of a 90 degree fitting at the elbow of the bend (I wish I was making that up). That is the sophistication at this company and such backwardness is pervasive at all levels thru all systems an organizations. Many companies have moved or are moving to designs made possible only by additive manufacturing. If you want to be involved in real technology development and innovation, consider EB's contractors. Working on submarines sure seems cool from the outside, but far & away most of the real technology is coming from EB suppliers, not EB. It's the difference between being involved in real engineering -- designing innovative technologies versus figuring out how to cram other's neat designs into a big tube. If you want to work in an environment and culture that is stagnated in the 1950s (and often enough a crass verbally abusive culture at that), with what appears at a glance to include the accumulated wear and tear and accumulated filth from that era to the present then by all means come to EB.