Pros
-Company culture is overall very good. Small company where everybody knows everybody and for the most part, actually gets along. There are a couple exceptions but even then it is kept professional mostly. It was not uncommon for people to meet outside of work. - Relaxed hours, relaxed dress code. Get your work done and nobody really cares what hours you work. People played ping pong over lunch when business was slow. -While going through some elements of personal life that affected my job performance, management was very understanding and supportive. -Machine shop is/was very clean compared to most others. -Work can be technically quite advanced and challenging for such a small company. Some impressive capabilities. -Benefits are solid if not great. -Good place to start a career and get a good feel for engineering (design, manufacturing, research, project - you will be able to do it all if you want). Overall I think it's a good place for a young engineer to begin an engineering career, but it's probably not for engineers with more than 5-10 years of experience.
Cons
-Negotiate a high starting salary, because you are not getting a raise. -The chief engineer is difficult to work with, and will second guess or micromanage all engineering decisions made by the various teams, whether you have a PHD or a BS. -The longer serving engineers are all in management roles - and have been forever. This means there is no room for advancement within the company. It is rare for younger engineers to exceed 3-5 years with the company. -Reluctant to train employees. On multiple occasions I heard various managers state that they were reluctant to continue to train employees to have valuable skillsets we needed, out of fear that they would leave the company - because wages were generally low for the Seattle area, and you were unlikely to get a raise. -Short sighted mindset: build it, ship it, quality doesn't matter, it just gets lip service. The long term plan changes every 3 months, meaning projects get started and closed with sometimes no warning. -Absolutely NO safety culture or concerns. I mean none. Management would watch a machinist stare at a operating lathe from a foot away with the safety shield disabled while not wearing safety glasses, and not say anything - regularly. If you brought up a safety issue, you would be laughed and told if it bothered you to go fix it yourself. -Cannot trust anything said in all-company meetings. It was all rainbows and daisies one meeting then a few weeks later there'd be another round of layoffs. Projects were constantly promised to be coming by management and ownership and they never appeared, or only at a fraction of their promised value. Constantly felt like the rug was being yanked out from under you in terms of job security. -Some of the old timers will talk about bonuses. Never happened while I was there.
