Great Culture that comes with terrible management and salary - Product Manager Airbus Employee Review

5.0
13 Jan 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- 35 Hour Weeks, and early finishes on Fridays at 12PM. Makes a great experience for Gym, Shopping, etc as you have quiet times to go. Thursdays often feeling like you have concurred the bulk of the week. Extending the weekend. - There are many events at the office that occur, with many communities, there are also many group chats about anything informal. You can easily make some friends or a community of people. - Big Employer outside of London, you get a recognised name, while being able to commute and drive to the office. Bristol is also very nice town. - Travel to many destinations (with generous expense policy), you can use airport lounges, eat out at your choice of restaurants for dinner, lunch, Expense snacks and drinks as you please, etc. - Very nice offices, each with their own piece of engineering history. Some connected to Airports, some with their own runways. As Airbus sites work together, you often get to travel for business reasons and see them all. - People are generally passionate at Airbus, and you can feel the buzz working in the office. This makes you proud to be there.

Cons

- Salary is not great, and bandings very limited. This job will not make you rich, but enough to live day by day. The promotions are very hard to come-by, and you will need endless working appetite, few years of tenure, and manager backing. The company generally does not want to expand budgets for roles, so they keep you in the smallest band and make it as hard as they can for you to get promoted. - Once you reach a senior band, it becomes very hard to go higher, if you are early in your career, expect 10+ years of tenure to reach a manager band and average pay once achieved. - Managers often are given positions because of tenure and not expertise. For example HR can move to Technical IT management commanding senior developers and architects. There is a clear lack of expertise with many managers, and therefore a lot of clueless managers operating large departments. - You will work with people in a range of countries daily. Generally it can feel a tricky dynamic working in this environment with some unfriendliness in some circumstances based solely on culture/location. - The company relies heavily on contractors, if you join with ambition to create a better future yourself, often times this dream will not happen, as most likely you will be governing and reporting on the work of other external organising doing the work. Therefore if you have a passion for what you want to do, this would not be the place. If you enjoy high-level, email and documentation you will love it. - 3 Days a week in the office, which requires you to 'book' your work from home days in advanced and throughly tracked. No exceptions to the policy. This requires you to move close to the office to work here, as commuting may be too much for this frequency.

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Airbus Response
1mo
Thank you for your feedback! We really appreciate you taking the time to share your journey with us and for highlighting the passion that makes Airbus a unique place to work. It’s fantastic to hear you enjoyed the flexibility of our 35-hour weeks and the strong sense of community we strive to build in our Bristol offices. I am, however, sorry to read that your not all areas of your experience met your expectations. Please be assured that we take your detailed concerns regarding technical expertise in management and salary banding seriously. We will ensure that your review is brought to the attention of our team in Bristol to help us continue refining how we grow and develop our people. We wish you the very best in your future career.

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1.0
23 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I had a job to survive

Cons

I thought coming in this organization would treat you better, but they still haven't learned from years of people have these experiences. This "one team" is simply obedience and this is not a review from someone who didn't want to do there job. It is purely a social game here. I haven't met a person yet who didn't talk about drinking or trying to have unprofessional relations within this organization. They have people who care, but not enough to actually do anything about it. They made promises of fixing the underlying issues, sending people to other locations, working to make the workplace better. But I promise you, they won't. In the U.S., you are a pawn to them, this is still a European company, and ethics isn't there game and you don't want to play. You can report, take time to make sure things are safe for others, but God forbid if you get a manager who sees you as a threat or gaslights you about your performance. They want you to rush, take unnecessary risks and they will discriminate you depending on the location. Come prepared with ADA accommodations, empower yourself to say no. And do everything you can to protect yourself if you want a job here without putting someone's life at risk. There is a reason Airbus tapered with evidence gathering flight recordings in France. And. they. got. away. with. It. If you get to a place were you can turn a blind eye, or have what I call, golden life privilege, where you made it somewhere and have some skills hard to come by with inequity in this world, then sign right up. That's what these positive reviews are about, it is just a game and they play the popularity contest to win. Not to keep you, and they will let you go, when you stand by the so called integrity they hire you on. Because this is a first hand account of it, and they will, take all the information you gather away from you.

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