Vantaggi
Several interesting high-tech projects and good engineers Most co-workers are good people and do a great job despite shrinking resources Entry pay is good -- but raises are small or zero
Svantaggi
Upper Management, period. Defense budgets are shrinking and new programs are scarce, but C4S business pursuit group has been losing a lot of new and follow-on programs, and is not going after enough new business. C4S carries a lot of dead weight overhead because there are too many layers of managers left over from when C4S was a larger, more profitable business. So the main solutions for this have been constant layoffs of non-management employees since 2011, benefit cuts - like cutting 40 hours of paid time off and no raises for 2013 -- and shutting off R & D for future programs. Upper Management does not even ackknowledge on-going layoffs any more -- people are walked out the door and management communicates nothing, allowing the rumor mill to be the only source of information. Management seems unconcerned about whether there are enough employees left to do the real work and is only working to keep those layers of management in place -- even if there's little left to manage.