Working at Raytheon — Reviews by Employees

Pay: The pay here is really competitive. Make sure to get your salary initially adjusted because annual raises are usually in the 3% range. If you are promoted you typically get about 7-10%. They also have performance sharing which is usually approximately 3% of your annual pay. In addition they have various incentive awards that you can get. However these are usually only doled out to brown nosers and people who make slide shows and present to the customer (i.e. not the people who do the actual work).

Respect: The average age of an engineer at Raytheon is in their early 50's. They tend to be extremely conservative. If you don't fit these criteria you aren't going to fit in very well. They love pushing their political beliefs onto you at meetings (very unprofessional), in emails (on the company email account), or in stickers and posters found hanging in their office or the wall. They also have a company PAC which they encourage you to donate to. If you are to the left of Barry Goldwater you will find yourself constantly the target of verbal attacks.

Benefits: The benefits at Raytheon are outstanding. They provide a generous amount of tuition reimbursement. Enough to take 2-3 classes a year without paying out of pocket (assuming a private university). They have advanced scholarship programs where they will actually pay you to go to school (along with covering the tuition in total). They have a great relocation package. They will put you up in an extended stay hotel for a few months while you look for an apartment or house. They will pay the renters fees and also will pay to have someone show you the town. They assist with closing costs and selling your house. They also have discounted gym memberships etc... Very competitive.

Job Security: You cannot get fired from Raytheon. There is just no way. When you are a subpar worker, they just transfer you to a new group/project. There are lifers here who have done literally nothing their whole career. When you are in the defense industry not much is really expected out of you. The company gets paid by the amount of people they have working on a program. So even if there is no work, you will still just sit there because they are getting paid handsomely for you to do so. If you aren't there, no pay.

Work/Life Balance: Raytheon is great for work life balance. They have the 9/80 schedule (work 9 hours a day, 8 hours one Friday, and then get off the next Friday). Its awesome to get every other Friday off. If you do work overtime, which is rare, they have to pay you because you are a government contractor. So while your buddies are working 50-60 hours a week and not getting paid for it, you can sit back and rake in the dough.

Career Potential/Growth: If you come in as an entry level engineer you should be promoted within two years of joining the company. Then on average you are promoted again sometime in the next three years. After that the promotions tend to happen at a slower pace. If you don't get into one of the leadership tracks, you'll pretty much tread water for most of your career. The "leaders" in Raytheon tend to be the least technically proficient but the best at delivering slide show presentations. Then you've achieved a "milestone". You can usually get promoted faster if you leave the company for a few years and then come back. Usually you'll be promoted up a few grades and get much larger pay raises then if you had stayed on. It's not really a fair system, but its how it is.

Location: Raytheon is all over the world. Some locations have better job prospects than others. Since each location is assigned work from a particular contract, if the contract is lost, so is your job. In this case you can move around if you can find work within the company elsewhere.

Co-worker Competence: There are some truly brilliant engineers (10%). There are some functional engineers (40%). Then there are some really lazy and bad engineers (50%). I think this is due to the fact that there is an extreme amount of nepotism in hiring decisions (good luck getting in if you don't have family already on the inside) and because they refuse to fire people. Additionally, since they get paid by the head, there is no incentive to weed out the weak engineers.

Work Environment: The work environment is not the best. As stated previously the workers here tend to skew much older than average (50+) and tend to like to push their beliefs down your throat at every opportunity. If you are not more militant than Clausewitz you probably won't like it here. The people here love war, it makes them money. The ironic thing is that most of the engineers have never served in the military. Its annoying when some nerd talks about wiping this country or that off the map. Maybe they would be less glib if they had actually served.

Overall its a mixed bag. I would say that the money, work/life, benefits, and location are all well above average. I would say that respect, competence, and environment are below average.

This is a good company overall. Like any company of this size, ensuring that you have truly great people in every key position is impossible. There will be good and bad. Overall, I think the company tries very hard to give people the opportunities to be their best, and contribute at the highest level they are capable of.

Work / life balance is great, as are the training opportunities.

Difficult work environment. Employees who have been in the company for many years resent new employees. Watch out for backstabbing and covert hostility. It's a "who you know, who you blow" environment in the worst possible way. Long term employees work the system, ride each other's charge numbers, milk jobs for overtime and take lots of stuff home. Upper elitist management seems unaware...and mostly seem too caught up in their own "success" and self promotion to properly manage a team. Annual raises are less than 2 percent, unless you have an inside track with your manager. The "Respect" campaign is nauseating. The more "Respect-O-Grams" that appear in your email, the less respect actually shown. And Who writes the respect-o-grams anyway...most have nothing to do with respect, or don't make sense at all. Satisfying work with meaning is little if any. The facility is outdated. I am so dissapointed. I felt I would have a future at this company, but it is now abundantly clear there is now career advancement opportunity. The stress can be overwhelming. Eager to find another opportunity where employees are actually respected. If you come to this company to work and your coworkers say they are "legacy Hughes" or "Legacy TI", BEWARE! I can't tell you the number of sleepless nights and stress...I will be sooooo glad to leave.

It's been almost a year since I took a voluntary lay-off "involuntarily". Leaving that toxic hell hole was the best thing I could have done considering the sociopathic Operations Manager and lying, inept HR Dept. I now have a life free of the daily stress and hazing. Yes, it was hazing and mind games to force older workers out. I also don't have to endure the embarrassment of listening to them announce product deliveries and contract wins when everyone knows once it goes out the front door, it is coming right back in the back door... because it's still a POS and didn't pass testing. I pity our poor sailors who stake their lives on that abysmal weapon. Why hasn't the Navy and Congress stepped in to investigate and shut down this fraud?

I was hired as a new employee, I was given no tasks and had no desk area, I was not accountable for my work day, as I was clocking in at 12:00 almost daily with no accountability from by supervisors, it was great, I did nothing and was paid big dollars to do so, so if you are the type of engineer that wants to do nothing and just die, Raytheon is the place for youl

Truly saddened by all the lip service to excellence and respect by mgmt. It could be such a great, thriving environment. Instead, it's a typical aerospace/defense shop that chews people up and burns them on the 3-tiered altar of cronyism, "just ship it" and teflon don-ism.

I'm not going to personally attack any Leader, but there is a culture of corruption, malaise and disrespect.

Just so sad...

I've noticed that Raytheon tends to understaff their programs. One has to be careful or you'll spend more time at work than at home. I've also noticed on my project, that meeting schedule and budget have a higher priority than meeting the technical requirements.

To their credit, HR did advise me that Raytheon benifits were not as good as my previous employer's benifits.

Uses racial criteria for performance evaluations. White males often get down-graded to prop-up females and other diversity groups

Listen I’m being totally truthful Raytheon is not the worst place to work however, if your thinking about switching companies or trying Raytheon Tucson my advice to you is NO don’t do it. There are many, many reason why not to join Raytheon Tucson. I will tell you this, in the last 18-months in my group 3 people quit Raytheon and one took his own life and this in the worst encomy since 1980. You can become very depressed at this company and believe this your not listening to some hack disgruntled worker, just a truthful reporter of facts. Heed my advice.

No surprise with the number people dissatisfied with this company. If you want high stress, back stabbing, insane policies, hostile coworkers, incompetent management, then Raytheon is the place for you. Sure they come across as all-loving and caring for their employees on the surface, but behind the scenes it's a cut throat as it gets. To be blunt, Raytheon is it's own worst enemy and just grinds people up and spits them out.