In a nutshell... below average salaries, no raises & practically no promotions. Once you are hired you will pretty much carry that same salary every year plus inflation adjustment. To clarify, this company does not believe in merit based raises while opportunities for career growth are next to none. They might however renegotiate your salary if you managed to tack on a Master's or Phd in a related engineering field while you are working there. On a sad note this also ties into how the company views engineers in general... unless you have that Masters or Phd then you are more of a technician to them more than anything else...
For better or worse this is a small/medium sized company that is operated and managed like its a small operation from the 1950s... the executives tend to be cold, reclusive, and stay in their own "inner circle" unless they decide to venture out to give someone a damn good yelling at. The higher level managers there apparently do not have good management skills or training to boot while many of them quickly resort to projecting direct fear and anger in order to compensate for their insecurities and shortcomings in the managerial role. Ironically, the growth path into this fantastical group actually does not exist. Rather than turning to existing employees to cross train and groom to become future leaders, the company would rather cherry-pick burnout managers straight from the unemployment line, give them a low-ball salary, and drop them right into action.... easy for the company, really bad for everyone else.
The company's lacking attitude and appreciation for its employees is also mirrored by their poor interest in capital investment.... Rather than using (modern) digital information systems for company operations they rather appear to be content in using the same systems that they have been using for the past 20 years: instead of keeping track of everything using a unified ERP system they have almost everything entirely on paper. Some databases exist but they are run using really old DOS programs such as FoxPro… on top of this each department has its own database so info tends to get re-entered multiple times. How about drawings? Well, they are produced in Autocad but are archived and kept as masters on vellum paper and stored in file cabinets. To clarify, in order to be sure that you have the latest revision of a drawing you need to call the “drafting” department (yes, I said “drafting”) to ask for a copy to be sent to you. ...No one from this planet operates like this anymore, not only is it inefficient but also very insecure and prone to delays when you have to rely on someone else to go to a file cabinet somewhere in order to scan and send you a copy of a drawing that you need ASAP.
The bottom line is if a company is not willing to invest in itself then you can be pretty sure that they won't invest in you. Save yourself a lot of time and frustration and look elsewhere for employment.
