cnc machinist

machinist

maintenance technician

electrical engineer

assembler

Curtiss-Wright

This site designs and manufactures an assortment of electronic boxes for military and civilian aircraft.

The company has recently made forays into software-intensive developments for data concentrators and fuel management. The experience revealed deep flaws in their management of complex systems, consistently and dramatically underestimating the time and effort required for system engineering, validation, and verification against requirements. The problems were exacerbated by a culture of "heroic effort" as standard operating procedure.

Most of those teething problems are now in the past, as they have developed a workable recipe for current projects. The experience, however, has financially challenged the division such that job security is minimal; this site is bogged down in a hire-a-bunch-of-contractors, fire-a-bunch-of-contractors cycle, and often permanent employees are swept up in the layoffs. It remains to be seen whether they adopt forward-looking improvements to their engineering and business processes in order to achieve profitability on future projects.

Note that other sites in the division appeared to have better recipes for success, but also have significantly different product lines.

I can honestly say - with more than 30 years of experience - that this is truly one of the strangest places I've worked.  

I'll take these one at a time:

Job Work/Life Balance
Be prepared to work overtime (without being paid for it).  It will be expected.  Do more and more and more, with less and less and less.  ANYTHING to bolster their precious Operating Income (OI).  Someone leaves?  No problem.. just divvy up the work to the remaining, already over-tasked people.

Compensation/Benefits
The pay and benefit package was excellent.

Job Security/Advancement
It's secure enough as long as you keep your head down fit in.
Advancement?  Sure... all you have to do is stick around for 10 years, getting whipped into compliance...  you'll advance.

Management
By no means should you EVER out-perform your boss or - god forbid - have the audacity to actually disagree with him/her.  They hate that ...no matter  how many years of experience you have doing what you do, or how successfully you smash their annual goals.

Job Culture
To "fit in" you'll have to assimilate into their definition of "culture."  They are very proud of that at CW.  In short, you will be very happy if you are a politically correct, hypersensitive, liberal bureaucrat.

So...  after two years of "not fitting in" the CW culture and working for an ineffective, unappreciative leadership team, I resigned.  

Life is too short to be a drone.

This position is not worth having.  Compensation is really good.  Senior IT management is clueless.  A single local SAN is over provisioned.  SAN is supporting replication for files from two other locations.  For additional space on SAN an offsite system admin changed the RAID configuration from RAID 10 to RAID 5.  
CAT5 LAN cables are strapped to power conduits.  LAN cables are all POE to Cisco phones.  Desktops plug into phones.  LAN cables do not trace as they carry a constant electrical hum/squeal from plant equipment due to the switches not having isolated grounds. Cut LAN cables hang from ceilings.  LAN documentation is obsolete.
Weekly travel to Dayton is required 2-3 days each week for desktop support.  Group Manager moved to a new position over Group Applications leaving his System Admins behind except for a southern site and Cincinnati.  Manager position is located north of Cincinnati. Cincinnati must now support Dayton as of 2014.
Training to familiarize you with the operation, providing access to the systems under your responsibility, the on-boarding process, and the cleanliness of the facility are a disgrace.  Network closets look like a ball of string a cat has played with for several days.

Pros: As a design engineer, I got a lot of opportunity to work on extremely interesting products. I got to work with all sorts of professions which seems like a rarity in today. Of that group, many of the engineers I worked with were of the top class of engineers, some were leaders in the industry. Most of the people I encountered day to day were phenomenal people.

Cons: Values held by management did not make it seem like they cared about employees nor were driving at values most engineers wish for. It was obvious that upper management only cared about the bottom line and stakeholders. Employees were seen as just a headcount, despite many being highly unique and specialized. Lower level management was usually good but the demands the higher ups placed were unbelievable. While the products made were highly engineered, quality driven product, management consistently set absurd cost and schedule demands that were unobtainable if quality were to be maintained. In the end, all were missed.

The short: Great opportunities to learn and grow as an engineer. Just be aware that management doesn't actually care much for you.

I’ve only been with the company for a little while, and I have to say, I'm starting to regret accepting the offer. Initially, I applied for one position but ended up interviewing for something completely different, as the role I wanted didn’t actually exist. When I expressed that the job they were hiring for wasn’t what I was looking for, they suggested I could train in three different areas and then eventually move into the role I originally applied for. 

It’s been almost six months now, and I’m still in the same area with no clear timeline for a move. The previous person in my position was pushed out, and ever since then, every time I bring up my concerns about my role and the lack of progression, I’m met with vague reassurances like “it’ll take time” and “we need to find you a replacement.” The atmosphere here feels quite negative, and despite trying to keep an open mind, it seems like everyone's egos are preventing any real change from happening. There are a lot of issues, and it feels like my department isn’t being treated as capable, which is really discouraging.

As a typical machine shop, you need to be part of the good old boy networking here to get ahead.  The people are nice, but many are inexperienced or lack motivation.  Jobs are being moved to Mexico so the long term stability is nonexistent.  There is a steady stream of work though and a nice mix of parts to keep you learning constantly.  Pay is decent, but management is horrible.  Upper management developed a system to bypass quality inspection points when QA backlog gets high.  Obviously our customers did not know this, so this is completely unethical.  Your ethics will be tested here for sure.  There are a lot of shady goings on here and they hire the wrong people for the management positions.  HR is pathetic as there is one lady who is practically never around.  Site leader is blind to all the problems going on here, but hey, your paycheck will show up on time and they pay a decent wage, so if you don't mind being jerked around and told to do unethical things, then this is a great place.  For me it was a paycheck and a part of my work history I'd love to forget.

This is a detachment of Curtiss-Wright Corporate that is located in Livermore, CA and calls itself "Metal Improvement Company". The company is currently going through a massive amount of growing pains due to the workload being more than what the personnel are able to keep up with on average. They are hiring people as much as they can but it's hard to find personnel that are willing to deal with the lack of training and resources at both their level and management.

One of the surprising disadvantages of this company is the lack of efficiency when it comes to documentation. Everything is kept on paper and very few things of use are stored electronically. There is no common operating system that everyone uses jointly, only a central storage hard drive where everyone stores their own data. Excel is the biggest player when it comes to organizing and managing data.

The biggest plus is that everyone is generally pleasant and management is easy to approach.

What is the best part of working at the company?
When we are busy the day goes fast. Also, you get 10 paid holidays, PTO and 2 weeks vacation up front. Benefits start on the 1st day of the next month after you are hired in.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Burning vacation and personal time when we have no orders nor jobs on the floor, and this happens a lot.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It's a hurry up and wait kind of attitude. We start over so much on documentation and implementation,  it's hard to believe that this company is over 100 years old.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Lately, a waist of time with very little to no work. The management made us use all of our vacation time because they said there was an error in H.R. They blame the lack of orders and work on Trump and Harris! It's an election year they say!

Used to be like a family, management knew your name and your kids names... Then they retired.  New management took over and the decline began.  They're the sit up in their Ivory tower and make decisions on paper that are impractical type.  Their arrogance flooded the place and ruined it.  If you disagree with them you find yourself laid off.  Since they took over they lay people off every few months. No rhyme or reason to it, just people that got on their bad side or had health problems. Once you got back from FMLA you were gone - either laid off or forced out  They fostered an extremely toxic culture which is sad because it used to be great.  I wouldnt recommend the brecksville location to my worst enemy.  Stay far far away. It was a mass exodus of retirements and people leaving the last few years everyone wants out! Also pretty much no mobility because they constantly eliminate positions. Dead end place.

There is nothing good here, stay away. Leaving was the best decision I have ever made. The Quality Director runs their business like it is a high-school popularity contest. I resigned minutes after the snotty child like Quality Ditector spoke to me as though I was a child.  The office environment is unhealthy with everyone seemingly scared to actually talk to each other. It's a very clique based culture and if you're not part of a clique, you will spend all your time disconnected from the rest of your colleagues. No one really seems to have an idea of what to do in their roles, and the term " lots of hats" gets thrown around a lot. This leads to individuals working in areas with no experience or desire to work in those areas. The HR is a joke if you have a legitimate concern. Overall, you'd be better off staying away. There is a reason the turnover is so very high. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Cnc machinist 49 salaries reported	$32.82 per hour
Machinist 38 salaries reported	$28.34 per hour
Maintenance technician 36 salaries reported	$29.67 per hour
Electrical engineer 24 salaries reported	$132,740 per year
Assembler 21 salaries reported	$21.94 per hour

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