senior inspector

electrician

Newport News Shipyard

NNS is a mostly stable business, with below average wages, above average benefits, and a culture all its own. It's oldschool and rough around the edges, yet the products they eventually produce are technological marvels. 

This company is in decline, or, at the very least, is in a deep transition period. This has been the case for at least the last decade. New carrier construction is seriously delayed, due to factors they can and cannot control. Covid made all of these issues worse, and inflation made them worse still. Ships that were ordered before Covid, and won't be done until the 30s, will never be profitable due to the mounting delta between the price the company got and the price it costs to build. This puts tremendous pressure on the company, which the CEO expects to continue until at least 2027, when most contracts will have been negotiated post-covid. 

Shipbuilding is a mostly dead industry in the US, with only a few large shipyards left. In spite of this, the US has a huge need for ships. It is critical that skilled employees be retained, as it is expensive or impractical to replace such specialized workers. Their ability retain employees weakens every year. The big class of hires from the 80s is retiring, and the experts who remain become overworked and burn out. Morale today is terrible. Sharp 5-10 year employees can find jobs that pay 20-50k more without much trouble. People will take pay cuts to work where they don't have to get to work at 5am only to walk 3-5+ blocks to their office. 

The people with options, either to retire a bit early, or find another job, are making their exits. A return to office while a parking garage is currently under construction, eliminating hundreds of spots, worsens this. Tightening up annual raises which are already mediocre, worsens this. And losing the core of the workforce, with 5-15 years experience, spells disaster in the years to come. 

Between 1981 and 1998, the shipyard built five CVNs. We will be lucky to complete our fourth in the 28 years since. They are in a tight spot, and I wish them well, but a lot of us can't take this ride with them. 

If you are young and free of financial responsibilities, this can be a great place to start your career.  For an older adult with more responsibility this place can be a challenging start of a good career but not without the financial struggle in the beginning due to the low pay.  According to the market, pay is fair but when compared to contractor and competing shipyards the pay is low. For a young person the pay may seem a lot at the progression of pay is every 6 months if with the union. The good thing is there are many internal roles that you can pursue.  A job is a job. For trades they say overtime is available  but that is not true if you are working in a shop. If you work trades in the waterfront, count your days.  The job is extremely taxing on the body so unless you are fresh out of high school, make a plan to pivot as soon as you can.  A lot of politics and gossip but that’s most workplaces.  NNS is a serious place, you do your work and go home (trades) but your life is at risk everyday.  

Parking is stressful if you work the first shift.  The offsite parking lot like Hiden isn’t manned by security all the time so your vehicle is at risk of being damaged or broken into. Shuttle busses take you from that lot to the worksite but you still mist walk a couple miles to get to where you meet your foreman and crew. Shuttle busses run frequently during that first clock in hour but later or earlier than that the bus is about every hour or none at all. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Knowing what you do supports defending our families.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Everything. Mismanagement of resources. Leadership treating employees like they're unwanted at best stupid at worst. Being tasked with three people's worth of work, given deadlines that are impossible while juggling multiple contracts, and told to get good when you ask for support and inevitably fail.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Depends on where you work. Some teams are great, understanding boss and coworkers that click l. Others are nightmares, bosses that are promoted for messing up royally, coworkers that will throw you under the bus for nothing. Upper management is working on taking away every incentive to work there, and most bans are enforced by different areas to different severities.

Newport News Shipyard is literally down under on earth. Don’t let the allure of good money distract you from a place where the majority of management still has “good ole” boy mindsets. The only way to make money here is killing yourself working 7 days a week and overtime is usually limited to a supervisor’s favorites. If you want employment at a place where it’s a place full of cliques, favoritism and plantation mindsets, then NNS is for you. If you are not buddy with the supervisor or for whatever reason just doesn’t care for you then your time at NNS will be a pure nightmarefrom getting the worst job assignments to never being able to work overtime. Also be wary of the make-up supervisors who are nothing more than an hourly worker like yourself but most will power trip. Every crew also has an in house snitch who will with a quickness let a supervisor know your every move. Simple put NNS is a house of horrors once you go through that turnstile

you go to work and work hard while most of the other people sit around on buckets and dont do anything. but the supervisors are to afraid to do anything about it because the worker will file a grievance and the union will probally win and nothing will happen to the lazy worker..

you work hard.. you dont get a raise or a "pat on the back" you just get more hard nasty work while the lazy people continue to sit back and watch.

i have learned allot from my mate there and have become a better mechanic because of him but for the majority the co workers are as useless and a black guy and should just get fired and save the shipyard some money.

most enjoyable part of the job would have to be working on turbines of the nuclear powered aircraft carrier. so many cool things involved in it and i'm glad i have a part in rebuilding them

While working at the shipyard, i interacted with several different trades trying to figure out what the job was for the day. most days on the other hand were more difficult than others due to the fact that i would have to wait for the fitters to come back to the job and fix bulk heads that had been fitted u improperly. If the fitting trades would not  fix it i would then have to get with my foreman to get the issue resolve but even then i could take up to a few days to get resolved. the hardest part of my job was having to work in some of the worst conditions i have seen yet, some jobs had to be cleaned up completely and others were rusted to the point to were you could not even work the job till it was cleaned up. the most enjoyable part was the opportunity to build my welding skills every day.

I used to dream of working for this company in highschool, I've been working here for almost 3 years now, and I can safely and confidently say that I was dumb. This place is awful, the supervisors are some of the most unqualified people I've ever worked for, the equipment is busted most of the time, other shifts take equipment off our jobs, everything is made needlessly difficult for no reason by supervisors who only care about themselves and have zero humility. This company does not value you in the slightest, if you're on second shift, good luck getting off of it unless you quit. There's not really any good reason to work here aside from the pay, the pay is completely acceptable but that's it.

There are thousands of jobs at NNS so they all differ in skill, work load, stress, work life balance. Find one that works for you.

There are millions of dollars of material flowing through the yard. There are a variety of jobs from hourly to salary that have to come together to get the ships and submarines built on schedule and at cost. 

It is a very difficult environment to work in if you are working on the waterfront. Not many creature comforts, extremely old buildings and equipment. 

Once you are working in the yard there are tens of thousands of jobs that you can advance your career. So if you get hired into a job you don't like within 6mo you are allowed to post to another job. 

Great place to work if you can make through the first year. Get used to no parking and walking many steps to get to your place of work.

This company is a good place to start your career and then move on once you meet the years of experience other better companies require to hire you.

This company is not a great place to retire from since you will get stuck in terms of learning new things, there is no retirement besides 401k, no Christmas bonus, you get treated like a cog in a machine, morale is very low, salary is on the lower end, and no one enjoys working there.

I have been working at Newport News for a little over 10 years, went through the apprentice school, front line fast foreman training program and have lead a crew. I left for about 6 months finished and obtained my associates and came back in to the engineering department. All my colleagues and team mates are amazing people and the environment is fun and exciting at times. Be prepared to put in the time though if you go salary as the work is fast paced in the VCS program. I do enjoy my work and have grown exponentially in many areas. If i leave i will take all this knowledge and growth with me and continue to spread it to what ever companies i may go to.  

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Senior inspector 1 salary reported	$30.00 per hour
Electrician 1 salary reported	$52,000 per year

Working at Newport News Shipyard: Company Overview and Reviews

Newport News Shipyard

Newport News Shipyard Ratings

Popular jobs at Newport News Shipyard

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected