As a software engineer I would definitely not recommend a career at Lockheed Martin. The following cons are made from a software engineering perspective.
Major Grievances:
- Most of the company is living in the past. It is extremely difficult to acquire modern software for any projects. Therefore, it is difficult to keep up with the rest of the world in knowledge of software technology.
- Mostly awful programming practices. Although there are a few rare individuals who care about good software, most of the engineers I have encountered write and heavily rely on unmaintainable, difficult to read, and bad code.
- Very difficult to move to other projects. I found that it is very difficult to move to different teams despite what you hear from interviewers and management.
- Culture of Complacency. People have been doing the same thing for 20+ years and are very resistant to change. (Cshell, C++98, archaic version control tools, and more). Very difficult to make positive changes.
- Moving up in the company based on seniority and not skill. You will meet lots of senior engineers that have been with the company for 15+ years who are at the skill level of a college graduate.
- Noncompetitive pay. Your salary at Lockheed Martin will be significantly lower than having a software engineering position in any other company
- Mediocre benefits.
- Marginal raises. There is a fixed tier system that ranks you against the entire department. So even if you did great on your team, you will. probably be ranked low compared against the entire department. I got a 2% raise this year...
- No bonuses, no incentives to work harder. Often, people get put in positions with increased responsibilities but with no increase in compensation.
- Little to no training. The company has very little training and does little to teach you and help you improve as an engineer. I was lucky enough to meet one good engineer who mentored me but even this engineer left the company out of frustration.
- Very low retention rate. Software engineers come in because of Lockheed's reputation and leave quickly out of frustration
Smaller annoyances:
- Little to no amenities. Pay for your own coffee. Pay for your own snacks. Some cool discounts available here and there.
- Overtime Gate. Have to work a certain amount of hours of overtime before they start to count. Example: work 45 and you get no overtime. work 46 hours and you get 1 hour of overtime
Overall, you can get lucky and be placed in a good team with good people. But the norm seems to be the opposite. For software engineers I would advise to skip this one and look for a job elsewhere.
