software engineer

senior system engineer

system engineer

senior software engineer

principal software engineer

Raytheon

My review is negative of both the legacy Raytheon Company and Raytheon Technologies. My review is also kind of long, but I think the detail makes up for that.

Post merger with UTC, the company is weaker now than it was prior to the merger. The people from that side of the company are being almost entirely supported by the legacy Raytheon side, since the Raytheon side came in with a lot of strong financial backing and recent DoD contract awards. UTC, on the other hand, has crashed in the wake of COVID-19 as commercial aviation is bleeding red. That's a bit more recent news and may be enough to convince new hires to stay away.

For my title, specifically for younger engineers, I feel this job has not taught me nearly enough without myself scraping for interesting jobs and training, despite how much the company will boast about cross-training, assignment mobility, etc. Most of the younger engineers I've seen hired straight from college in the last year must learn to deal with outdated legacy systems no one besides outdated DoD companies use. Raytheon was risk adverse prior to the merger, and it is more risk adverse now, so impactful change is reviewed heavily under a microscope. Younger engineers generally are given busy body work for 6-months or so to start to get their feet wet, but don't mistake this for training. It is a contract job with a charge number, and failure to produce results will end negatively, even if you are new and no one more experienced was assigned to help you.

The workplace culture is mostly stale, with some hints of freshness at best. They have a ton of employee resource groups, social initiatives, morale events, ethics training, and so on. The issue is, you don't have to work there long to see casual racist/sexist/homophobic comments. I'll admit this usually comes from the older employees, but management has done little to nothing about from what I have seen personally. 

The pay is average at best for the Massachusetts area. Most of the incentive to work here come from the profit-sharing and individual performance incentives, but considering how poorly the company has performed in 2020, most employees are expecting minimal compensation at best. There is also the issue of new hires being paid more than what longer-term employees are making. We have a payscale transparency, but the range is so wide and doesn't factor in a bunch of variables. For example, a ME II new hire working in a low cost of living state like New Mexico would be put on the same payscale as a longer term higher nearing promotion in a high cost of living state like California. This basically results in a position having a wide gap, like $60k-$110k for an ME II. 

The management depends heavily on what you do and how you work. Some managers expect you to work long hours to achieve a short deadline. The company does pay OT, so that is nice, but it is at a standard hourly rate for salaried employees, not 1.5x like hourly employees. This often times makes it not worth the effort, since they'll have a new one line up right after. My manager is personally excellent, but many of the other ones I've worked with could care less if they run you into the ground, so long as they get what they want.

The hardest part of the job, for engineers anyway, is accepting you are basically doing menial work most of the time. Like making a presentation understandable for non-technical folks or doing a multiple stack-up analysis of some screws in a plate to determine the min/max tolerance and acceptable risk of failure. Nothing groundbreaking and most design work comes in small parts. This is my main reason for why I think younger people should not work here. I think if you come from this background at a young age and try to go into fast-paced private companies afterwards, you'll have a hard time. If you do it in reverse, you will have that work ethic and probably succeed well at Raytheon.

The last part I'll talk about is the job security. It is pretty hard to get fired from here, usually. Like I said earlier, the merger has left us weaker than we were prior. Raytheon announced they would be laying off 15,000 employees by 2021, so that sucks. Most of that is corporate and UTC companies, but I think it would be very foolish to think it won't come from legacy Raytheon folks when the bottom line needs padding. Before all of that, it was pretty hard to get fired. You may fade into the background, become a number, and get little to no raises, but you'll still have a job. The only person I have seen been laid off is a person who had failed their performance improvement plan, twice, had multiple strikes for falsely charging hours, and seemed to be moonlighting at a competitor. Once you have your clearance, they want to keep you. 

All in all, I think I made a mistake coming here from the private sector. If you want a place to come retire, need a lot of job security, or are in need of a place that is hiring, they can fill that role. If you want job satisfaction, meaningful work, and to work for a company that really cares about its employees, I would say this isn't who you want to work for.




The advertised culture and values are not what is actually put into practice at Raytheon. Policies and ethics are rarely supported and enforced by management when it is not convenient.  The hiring practices are terrible and this leads to extremely high attrition/turnover.

A typical day was very frustrating; everything is priority. When everything is priority, nothing is priority. Management seldom supports the right decision based upon quality or ethics and usually goes with what has the least cost and schedule impact. It is my experience that this is because on the FEOTB (Front End of the Business), projects and contracts are typically underbid purposely to win them or get them approved and rarely have the proper people bidding them or writing/reviewing the BOEs (Basis of Estimates). This leads to middle management being in a perpetual state of committing to unrealistic goals (over-promising and under-delivering) that most of the team doesn't support and won't achieve.

People are not held accountable for poor performance in their primary roles. The hiring practices are terrible, and this leads to extremely high attrition/turnover. It has become a social justice DEI driven culture as well which has led to hiring and role assignments of unqualified people instead of those with the experience and skills who merit them. 

Another con is that far too often, impractical and unjustified authority is given to almost all core functions (operations, finance, safety, security) except engineering and quality when it comes to making a critical decision which impacts hardware or the production process. This leads to poorly implemented solutions or, worse yet, the incorrect corrective action all in the name of saying "we did something" to appease leadership.

The COVID nonsense was the last straw for me.  Management followed the CEO's lead as was expected and went into full-blown dictator mode, making a bad culture even worse with their propaganda and fear-mongering.  This caused all sorts of new problems with people spending the hours of their work day tracking people to ensure compliance (especially those they didn't like or agree with politically).  People were complete hypocrits when it came to reporting those who did not wear their face covering 100% of the time as "guidance" suggested (no one did).  You shouldn't have to spend your entire workday looking over your shoulder wondering who may see your naked face and report you to whomever.  I was honestly told by my manager that, just because of unvalidated false reports of non-compliance with respect to mask policies, that they would be documented and lead to suspension/termination.  This middle school-type nonsense was just unbelievable to me and way too much to handle with the already heavy technical, administrative, and leadership workload associated with my role.

Advice for Mgmt:

Hold people accountable for mistakes and ensure the proper functions/stakeholders have equal weight in decisions.  If your team (the ones who are really executing) doesn't support plans/ideas, it's not a good idea to do it just to make the metrics look good or to make a chart look better in a review.  

Another piece of advice:  Don't let operations or local site leadership have influence over an engineering promotion.  The "bad guy" who wants to do the right thing is rarely viewed favorably by the people who spend most of their time staring at the bottom line all year long.  With respect to the product, quality and meeting requirements should always come before profit.  The products that we design, build, and sell are technically complex with very strict requirements.  What we do is difficult, and not everyone can do it for a good reason, so appropriate time must be afforded to ensure everything is right and in order.  The expedient option is very rarely the right choice.  

One more thing.  Stop letting managers at the program level and business unit level (outside the manufacturing facility) micro-manage everything with over-reporting on a daily basis.  For example, someone in CA shouldn't know what is happening hour-by-hour in MS every day.  That's what leads to status meetings three times per day which is completely unnecessary.  You don't need local operations management if you're going to allow that, and it's a foolish way to do business.  It fosters a toxic, political atmosphere.  

Configuration Management,  Raytheon Corporation,  Florida, 1992 - 2014
Established and maintained consistency of Raytheon work products for performance, functionality and physical attributes using product requirements, design and operational information including versions and updates that have been applied throughout the products life. Involved in product vibration testing and temperature screening. Learned appropriate testing tools utilized in this effort so to become an effective, efficient contributor to this position. Created a 'user friendly' Database using ACCESS to replace ESS log books. Worked on the ‘next generation’ CEC SDP-S terminal. Responsible for evaluating CEC CCAs that comprise the CEC (Cooperative Engagement Capability) terminal. Ensured that CCAs respective VIDs (Vendor Item Drawing) content met CEC requirements. Interfaced with vendors from UK and Canada to discuss flaws that existed in VIDs and assisted on remedies for correction action.

CEP Test Lead
Successfully developed, implemented, and lead CEP (Cooperative Engagement Processor) FQT (Formal Qualification Testing) of then latest upgrade of CEP software. Supervised five Engineer testers whose responsibility was to create and run tests to simulate multiplatform CEP activity and ensure the CEP software was meeting CEP specifications. At conclusion of each test day I conducted a ‘hot wash’ with testers and government witnesses and quality engineers present to discuss the days activities and what testing was to occur the next day.

APEX SME
Involved in the integration (APEX) of various newly acquired businesses (E.G., Hughes, Texas Instruments, Chrysler Defense, E-Systems) into the Raytheon organization. Used SAP business application software as the underlying foundation to achieve a successful integration of these companies into one Raytheon. Worked on a ‘contracts to cash’ team that filtered through existing contracts and customers found in legacy databases and integrated them to obtain a clean, common Raytheon database.

Software Engineer
Responsible for the design and implementation of the SIAP (Single Integrated Air Picture) database  used for independent research. Performed Solaris UNIX OS v2.6 and Oracle 9i installation. Designed the Oracle instance and schemas for this research project. Held system administrative duties of both the UNIX Operating System and the Oracle database.  Used LabView to exercise the CEC antenna pedestal there. 
Designed and developed software routines for a spread-spectrum frequency hopping communications system (CEC). Used ADA programming language to generate embedded software for target multiprocessors in Wind River OS environment. Development environment was Sun UNIX OS. Designed link budget models for a spread-spectrum frequency hopping communications system. Used MS-Excel spread sheet as a link budget tool. Developed spread sheets for various link components (i.e. rcvr, path loss, xmtr, etc.). Created macros to automate and perform 'what if' link analysis. Software developer of exception processing routines for an embedded multiprocessor communications system using C/C++ programming language. Wrote system test requirements. Involved in network engineering testing during field support evaluations.

Information Technology product and service sales, project management, customer interface and lifecycle planning, six of which are industrial in nature and span work requests for simple service and support to multi-year complex phased projects in many different building/asset settings from wind tunnels to Administrative office suites and supercomputing facilities. I was responsible for daily and monthly project progress reports for tracking contract proposals and other documentation through signature/approval processes and advised/informed subcontractor and staff relationships accordingly while coordinating with clients, handling inter-departmental communication, and relationship cultivation. 

Sponsored project management was the key to Raytheon’s success as contractors at NASA, as we managed service requests for funding sources continuously. Project proposals for external funding, including budget allocation and project initiation, was one of my primary functions. I worked with the NASA government finance office for the IT division, as well as external funding directorates to review estimates and proposals for appropriateness and completeness of content. I also verified compliance with the sponsoring organization's guidelines and NASA’s safety policies and procedures while overseeing and monitoring all current groups, Tasks and project activities and budgets, from both a fiscal year and project scope perspective. 

I did all of IT infrastructure’s subcontracting with both competitive bid and single source vendors and support contractors and was the technical writer of P/R’s, ODC’s and single source justifications, for the Raytheon procurement office. I advised staff about changes in policies and procedures; worked with procurement and legal on subcontracts; developed a system to track awarded projects and burn rates; ensured ongoing accuracy of budgeted indirect cost rates and ensured that anticipated promotions and annual cost of living increases were calculated into budgets. I performed contract negotiation, budget modifications, change orders, maintained project records and performed all other actions needed to keep contracts in compliance with departmental and client regulations, while identifying budget issues, making recommendations to address concerns, and resolving problems.

Learned a great deal about Government working environment

Progressed as a manager

Co-workers were largely who I chose as employees as well as sub-contractors and civil servants

Hardest part of the job was assuring the same sense of urgency  among governmental departments involved in my projects and simply required patience and repetitive communications

Enjoyed the challenge and the learning opportunities as well as the people

Nothing against Raytheon, I was the 3rd generation to work for them and enjoyed what I did. I would work 8.5-9.5 hours per day depending on volume/needs of chemicals. I was the only warehouse worker for HAZMAT, my supervisor/lead would always come to me with "favors" which would be shipping things he was asked to ship on top of all of my other duties and shipments I had. I was scheduled to work until 3:30 and most of the time, I would be asked to get shipments out around 2-3 o'clock. I've said many times that I do NOT want to be rushed to get your material out, and it's never changed. My hours were changed several different times to accomodate the company, and with trust in the company I wanted to do whatever it took to help the facility out. Everyday I'd see other employees abusing their computers and on facebook, shopping or looking at things on google, while I'm rushing and working trying to get my shipments on time for the pick-up time. My supervisor had asked me about getting some help for me and naturally I agreed to relieve some stress. I saw a opening position at Raytheon working directly under my Superviser and I talked to him about the position. He said to give it a month and see what happens. 2 weeks later he said that I should apply for the position with that being my #1 priority for that day. Weeks kept going, while I ship out hundreds of chemicals out and wondering why I haven't been replied back to about my application. I was scheduled an interview with the MCP Manager and he said flat out I cannot get this position because of my attendance. I feel this was a ploy to just use my application for their hiring process. So I spoke to my superviser and then to the MCP Manager, my superviser clearly told me that there was NOBODY in the warehouse that worked harder than I did and nobody else deserved this position but according to the upper management they didn't want any of my supervisers say, but how could they not, considering he's the HAZMAT Lead. I was never spoken to about my attendance, and I had taken the days off for personal reasons which I had spent some days and nights at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Not to mention a few times I left because of racial comments I've overheard in the warehouse, went straight to my superviser and told him why I'm taking the rest of the day off. No consequences were done, however they make corrective actions over anything and everything else besides racism.

Raytheon is a very old company that has a longstanding reputation and some very devoted, long-time, intelligent employees. The benefits are pretty standard (2 weeks vacation, 1 week sick, medical/dental/vision/retirement, etc.). 
That being said, the company acts like an old company. The technology is extremely outdated. 
When a new, bright mind comes in with inspiration and motivation to make changes, they wind up getting a job somewhere else (either internally or externally). This is because it is well-known and spoken within the company to move up, you need to move up and over. Meaning, promotions within your role are hard to come by. You'll need to move to another role (i.e. supply chain to finance) and up one payscale level. To give an example, one person I knew did the up and over job change and got a 12% raise after working for 1.5 years. Same person stayed in that role for 3 years and received a promotion they had to fight for with a 4% raise. Attrition is exceptionally rough at Raytheon as well. Part of the up and over is that employees leave the company for better paying roles for a few years and then come back for twice their original salary (or sometimes more!). There's no incentive to stay in your role or make longstanding improvements. 

On top of that, they advertised their "Workplace of the Future" system to bring in remote and hybrid employees. But, they've been removing the ability to work remote progressively until now they are saying all US Based remote work will be over come mid-October except for a handful of exceptions. This decision was made at a very high level so it's not like low-level managers were purposefully hiding the fact, but still many employees have lives built around remote and hybrid setups and they are suddenly changing it. 

Team and office culture is different on a case-by-case basis. I love my team and our dynamic, and I feel like we achieve a lot given our resources. But, I know some people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum. So, make sure if you are interviewing you get to know the manager to make sure you are a good fit just as much as they are assessing.

The work itself was fun and entertaining, I learned many skills and traits that carry into daily life. Management needed improvement when it came to how they treated the employees especially during extenuating and life threatening circumstances. The Politics of the company were abhorrent. Most of my co-workers were wonderful people but exceedingly cut throat.

 The hardest part of the job was quick turnovers, scheduling conflicts, and illnesses/ lack of sick days. Quick Turnovers- the company operated in two shifts, AM (7A-3:30P) and PM(3:30P-12A) many times you would be given back to back turn arounds multiple times per week. (ex. M- PM shift T- AM shift W-Double shift Th- AM shift) Where this was problematic was the exhaustion and toll it took physically to stay awake. If you have a 30 minute drive time from your house to the facility these turn arounds would only allow the Remote Pilot Operators to get six hours of sleep at best and that is providing you could go to bed as soon as you got home and didn't need to shower all week. Scheduling conflicts- Even if you had a non negotiable doctors or dental appt. you were not guaranteed time off for the appt. If you were to go on vacation and bought air fare you still may have to change your flight. Illness/ Lack of sick days- we were not given sick days by the company. If you did not call in by 10 Pm the night before it was considered an unexcused absence even with a doctors note. If you got sick during your shift, you were not guaranteed to go home and therefore many illnesses spread like wildfire through the facility including Swine Flu in 2009. If you had a child and were on shift, you were chastised for leaving work to go pick up your child. Even if it were at the daycare facility's request. 

The most enjoyable part of the job was the work itself. It was truly gratifying to help teach the students their trade, and in turn help them succeed in a career. Not only that but mentally I enjoyed the challenge of system error to where we had to step in and input specific algorithms to fix either radio or personal error. The Instructors became amazing friends as well.

Raytheon Missile Systems is running a fascinating experiment: can the division create processes so robust that failure becomes impossible despite declining technical aptitude among employees?
Company values have shifted; people with great salesmanship and communication skills but marginal technical capability, politicians, are highly prized whereas those with great technical capability like SMEs, innovators and smart engineers are ignored. As politicians fill more management roles, technical competency of new hires has fallen and increasing numbers of frustrated technical people have left.
Some interesting positive feedback mechanisms have emerged:
- The technically less competent politicians rely on checklists and procedures to think for them resulting in a bloated, dogmatic engineering approach that frustrates engineers and stifles innovators, encouraging their departure.
- Politicians excel at issue framing, massaging data, and appearing busy. Only busy people in technically complicated roles can fail; further proving the incredible value of those who do nothing.
- Since management is no longer technically competent, it relies on the easily comprehended, but often inaccurate, self-assured babble of emerging politicians resulting in inadequate risk mitigation and then increasingly poor decisions as unmitigated risk becomes realized. This further frustrates those who saw the problems from afar and advocated appropriate action.
- The quota based ranking scheme guarantees that politicians receive the largest block of raises while noncompetitive salaries of the technically competent drive defection.
- Since knowledge is not valued, every person with the same title is interchangeable and can be flexibly assigned to any position regardless of actual suitability; prohibiting career development for all and setting up an unfortunate few for failure.

The experiment is a catastrophe resulting in cost over runs, lost opportunities and schedule delays. Fortunately, the politicians are on the job, actively driving out all the SMEs, innovators, and engineers who disagree with its roaring success.

If you like mind-numbing work whilst stuck at a bench all day, Raytheon is for you!
If you love management that has no grasp on anything Assembly workers do that constantly try and cut break times, and stop workers from talking (as if you're still in high school) Raytheon is for you!
If you loved all the childishness of high school rumors, and bathroom drawings then Raytheon is for you!
Don't like your manager? Scream in their face for something that probably is out of their control, that's what most of the old timers here do, and you're part of a union so who cares, right?
Don't mind being looked down upon by higher ups just because you're union this place may just be for you. 

In all seriousness though this company treats their employees like garbage whilst outsiders who find out you work there will "aww" at the fact that you work for "such a good company with GREAT benefits". 

This place is soul sucking and not for anyone who isn't planning on spending the rest of their lives there. 

If you need a job that will get you through school, sure they say they'll pay for it but that isn't a guarantee. They deny workers of that benefit quite frequently to save some money. Unless you're a business major or an Engineer student they won't pay for you schooling, even if there are job opportunities within the company that call for that profession.

Depending on the area you work they will be incredibly difficult or very lenient towards having flex time for classes that are taken outside of Raytheon's own schooling. What I mean by that is if you are taking one of Raytheon's Test B classes they will let your time be flexible around the class, however if you are just taking regular college classes for a degree then you're on your own to figure that out.

Raytheon shakes your hand while spitting in your face and saying "Take our money, shut your mouth and work faster". I've had managers here that were only trying to do the right thing get yelled at by union employees for things far out of their control. I've also seen union workers get berated by management for missing work over serious family medical issues. Raytheon is a mixed bag and you either love it or you don't, and for me I didn't so I left.

I worked there for 25 years as a woman engineer.  They’ve made progress but often felt it was only skin deep.  They don’t encourage you to share pay info with coworkers so it’s tough to know what everyone else makes but I believe gender pay disparity exists even if it got better over the years.  Their compensation system is rigid & it takes a long time to correct disparities.  Also, while they ‘talk the talk’ They don’t always walk the walk and there are little micro-inequities you encounter every day if you are a woman: ex typically more men than women in engineering meetings and you’ll deal with the constant expectation that the woman in the room will take the minutes, the way  you will never receive any team building shirts or jackets in women’s sizes - you will be incredibly lucky to get a men’s small - seems trivial but it sends the message that they aren’t really considering your existence when ordering these things.  If you are a vegetarian, plan on making do with a cookie and a bag of chips at any catered meetings/workshops.  Plan to manage your own career.  The company works on DOD contracts so most work is charged to special account numbers associated with a DOD contract and they HATE to spend their own money (overhead) so most managers are also expected to hold down a ‘real job’ at least 30 hrs a week and then find time to manage and mentor up to 30 employees with whatever time is left….. it doesn’t result in great management.  Most managers I encountered were good people but just too busy to be great managers

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