Sigma Design Reviews

It's a great place to work... until it isn't. You can be written up and/or fired with absolutely no warning if a single person in the entire company takes issue with you, and if they complain about you first you are toast, even if they lie through their teeth about you and you can prove it. So many people are fired out of the blue for (at best) insignificant or (at worst) completely bogus reasons that it leaves many employees in constant fear of losing their jobs. The whole company is one big popularity contest and you are exceptionally more likely to be hired and far less likely to fired if you are part of the "in" crowd (which generally means you're an outgoing man younger than 35 or older than 55 who enjoys drinking, manly activities, and/or sportsball, or are someone who can fake it and fit in with people who match that description). Although a few women hold high positions in the company, most women are hired into admin/receptionist/"feminine" type jobs or lower level positions in the company and in my experience commonly fired for insignificant offenses, generally unfair reasons, or downright lies, while similar or worse complaints against men would receive no corrective action, let alone firing, unless it was a really serious offense (cheating on hours, no call no show habits, etc). The above is obviously the worst thing I experienced and observed during my time at the company, but there some other things which new applicants should beware of: Job listings frequently don't line up with the job that you will actually be doing, including frequent cases of listing required skills or training that you aren't even allowed to utilize, requiring experience with tools you will never handle, and stating job duties that are more varied or vastly different from what the position actually entails. This leaves some employees disgruntled after starting the job. The company is more likely to hire managers from outside than promote from within, leaving very little room for upward movement unless you completely change work areas or projects. As soon as the company reached a critical mass and expanded too fast (basically around the time I got hired, I think), internal communication and organization fell apart (or just was never set up properly to begin with), leaving many areas totally disorganized and causing good employees to be stressed and frustrated and seek other jobs.

The work here is mostly what I would call "diet" engineering. The majority of the work is to make fixtures or tooling for a client to produce a widget or to process something. It boils down to "make a frame out of extruded aluminum, add some toggle clamps, maybe some sensors and a PLC". Engineers aren't required to do analysis or documentation. They cartoon something up in CAD, build it, then play with it until it sort of works. Then management or the owner gets frustrated at how long it is taking and ships it. When the occasional project comes along that requires more rigor, they have to down-select their engineering pool to a handful of individuals who have the chops and the discipline to succeed. This means that there is little room for mentoring younger engineers, as when these big jobs come up they can't take the risk and have to rely on legacy folks who have been proven. At 300+ people it is still run like a tiny operation. The processes and management structure they have just doesn't scale. To this day do not have a PDM system in place for releasing and controlling engineering drawings. They still can not document what the ME design flow is, despite getting ISO certification. It's the wild west. If you are not a Mechanical Engineer, you are a second class citizen here. Business development has no idea what you do or how to sell your capabilities to a client. Management also is clueless how to oversee anyone outside the ME discipline. Most managers have an ME background, so you'll end up reporting to someone who doesn't understand your background or abilities, and often doesn't care. They have had several opportunities to grow other disciplines and make Sigma a better overall engineering firm, but leadership refuses to put any money into this. They will buy the latest tool or machine for the shop at the drop of a hat, but getting lab supplies or devkits or tools for the other disciplines is like pulling teeth. The VP of Business Development once told me that EE and FW were simply add-ons to a mechanical job to be sold to a client so we could win the job . That's how they view other disciplines, mere accessories to their core work. The hands-off management approach, coupled with their view of ME as the pinnacle of engineering, has led to some terrible employee situations over the last few years. There were toxic ME team members who exhibited unacceptable behavior that went unaddressed despite HR complaints. Good people left the company because of the treatment of these individuals. But they were left alone, or even worse promoted. In contrast, team members in other disciplines were dealt with immediately and harshly for questioning management and why certain decisions were made. Being fair, the nature of these questions was sarcastic and that isn't helpful. But why immediate disciplinary action against some folks for minor attitude adjustments, and a blind eye to others with repeated patterns of abusive treatment of coworkers? The only commonality I've seen is a blind eye is turned toward the Mechanical Engineers. Like most family-owned small companies, there is a ton of nepotism here. There are some legacy folks who have been around for a while who have been promoted to positions they have no aptitude for. It's understandable that trust is given to these folks as they were key when Sigma was a tiny company. But the skillset needed to run a department at a 300+ person company is quite different. I think the people in these positions know they are unqualified, because if they are questioned on anything they become immediately defensive. The owner also has a penchant for bringing his buddies into the company to manage key departments. This means as the company grows, the fiefdoms are starting to form that are run by people of special relationship to the owner. If these fiefdoms are challenged, they go whining to the owner and the challenger is hit with disciplinary action. Lastly, their middle management staff is largely made up of folks about 2-3 years from retirement. A lot of them have 20+ years experience at a large company like HP or Xerox, and then come to Sigma just before retirement age. And as you might suspect, they don't do anything. They attend meetings and do the occasional review. Mostly they just drag down every project they are on and meeting they are in as they are uninformed and unprepared. And pray you don't run into a real problem with a client or a coworker. They will do nothing to help you.