Pros
Technical work content is challenge!
Cons
Company has undercurrent of dishonest managers in the Integration and Test Groups. They trick people into Engineering positions and you come out to work in Maryland and find out that your put into a test role. You cannot transfer out of the group! You work for really bad managers that manipalate you etc. It is a science how bad they manipalate the employees. I watched 28 of 30 people that hired into the group leave within first 18 months. You pretty much are locked into a no raise situation. You do all the work and the bad management will asign one of thier buddies to take over on last minute to get credit and bonus etc. If you try to transfer out of group the management will use "Needs Of The Business" rules to force you to stay etc. If you leave the company the group will keep you from working for many years. They will not close your clearance out at NGC. Then the individuals tasked with maintaining privacy in clearance process puts stuff in your background as it is not closed and of course this is accidental. Yep, I left and couple years after leaving the guy put stuff in my paperwork so that when other company individuals would call over he would display or say false information. These people would believe him and drop you like a rock. I know several people happy in the real engineering groups but be very afraid of the Systems Integration and Test Groups. Yeah, like day one when I started we had the fake reorg and the job I was hired went away etc. The group I worked for was double billing the government and openly encouraged you to look the other way or to get better raises and or bonus play thier games. I love to work and such and worked a lot of OT etc. Yet, if you took any classes or education , the manager treated you like you were not contributing. The group in Integration was made up of manager and executives children that had zero real engineering skills. Group was quite pitiful technically. I do know there were better groups but you could not leave the management group I got into. If you use Northrops Open Door Process you are basically setting yourself up as the managers control the human resources individuals and the complaint just lets them know to start screwing you over. Many people told me I got shafted. I see them in the stores around the area and basically the person I worked for was known for this but becasue she was daughter of a judge that they needed to fight all the legal issues she gets away with it. I went to HR just to get away from a narcistic person but they would not allow me to get out of the group. When I would try and work on other projects they would have some reason I had to come back to that one person. So I actually mentored three interns and had no inputs into thier reviews. They gave them glowing reviews as the work I mentored them was good work. I desigined a whole subsystem, ordered all the equipment and built it using 3 interns. Yes, get poor reviews so they can bascially keep you from no raises. When you hire into the group. They calculate the years you will be there and divide that by the end salary and well you will get 1/2 percent raise every other year. Meanwhile the idiots that are all firends get huge pay boost and most of them did zero work. There were three people that were running businesses, doing sports coaching for thier kids during work hours. They lied about people working fom other groups so they could make the bench utilization completely filled to get bonuses. So they would always tell me to write in log books how people I never met helped me etc. I found that once you signed your time card they would lock you out. Then they would charge extra hours for you so they could bill governmetn and also to back fill the lies / story about bench utilization. The management would set you up on a bad day to get some human resources notice on you to hold over you to justify no pay increases etc. Here is a kicker. I finally thought I had gotten out of the group. I worked mega hours on proposals and POCs for a guy. Then come eval time I found out I still worked for the other witch. Got a really bad eval as I did nothing for them. So got upset and left message saying "How could you do something like this to me". Well that was reason for the third raise not happening. Again, this group was pathetically dishonest. You would think human resources would allow people to get away from toxic narcistic individuals. Then when you leave they laugh how they can keep you from working. Be very careful taking a job. Stay away from the Integration Managers .... Work only for Development groups.