Cool Work with Awful Management - Software Engineer CAE Employee Review

CAE offers the opportunity to work in a highly respected and technically advanced aviation environment. The work itself is meaningful, especially knowing the impact our services have on pilot safety and training outcomes. Many of the employees are knowledgeable, dedicated, and genuinely care about doing the right thing for clients. The Las Vegas team is collaborative, and there is a strong sense of teamwork when challenges arise. Leadership has supported improvements during periods of transition, including operational changes and facility moves, and there is exposure to multiple areas of the business that support my professional growth. CAE also provides solid benefits and stability as a global organization, which is reassuring in a fast-changing industry.

Like many large organizations, business decisions are made without the appropriate change management or the end user being considered. Resource constraints, such has limitations on hiring, particularly during periods of growth place additional strain on frontline teams. Communication and alignment between departments or Centers are inconsistent. Some operational issues would benefit from more proactive planning rather than reactive fixes. There are opportunities to further invest in tools, equipment, and infrastructure to better support employees and client.

I don't have to work there anymore.

- CAE is trying to get bought out, so they are leaning into defense and chopping other areas. - They are banking on AI being able to do everything (they have no clue how subsidized AI currently is and are going to have to do more layoffs to afford the amount of AI they have implemented when tokenization comes for them). The buy-in is so heavy it borders on psychosis. They practically had the lunch lady and the janitor in AI training meetings trying to create their own agents for some reason. - From the tales before my own, layoffs happened really often and at random, shocking, disturbing, and overwhelming those who were left. - Their eyes are WAY too big for their stomach. They gobbled up so many smaller companies in the industry and then didn't know what to do with the talent they brought on board. Also squandered the resources they purchased. They have a set of priorities and quantity is on the list. Quality is missing entirely. - New CEO is trying very hard, for some reason, to sound dippy and flighty. He is not your friend. Remember that no management is your friend, no matter how "in the trenches" they claim to be with you. - "Flex" vacation scheme is an absolute ripoff unless you are smart enough to milk them for every day you can convince them to let you take off. Take all you can get because NO vacation payout if they lay off/fire you. - End of employment was demeaning and insulting. Just like other roles, HR seemed overwhelmed and couldn't take the workload of the layoff because they neglected to send out information, there were errors in the severance document, and they apparently didn't have anyone remaining who knew how to arrange the pages in a PDF. They were late to their own meeting laying people off, by the way. Anyone who had the illusion of feeling valued lost that within the span of three minutes. - It is feast or famine: Everyone is either overloaded with work and stressed out, or they are bored and disappear from the office to go do whatever and you don't even notice because you're so busy. - They are constantly trying to game their own internal employee metrics (switching up survey methods/platforms, constantly blasting employees with surveys and solicitations for feedback so much that you're overwhelmed or stop bothering, employee "talent" self-review time every 6 months) to try to make it look like they have positive relationships with staff. It felt like justification for adding "benefits" we didn't ask for instead of raising pay.