Boeing

The compensation package is great.

Saint Louis is a nice place to live, but there are few decent jobs. The area is part of the Midwest's decline.

Leave your ethics at home. It's all about pumping up your many managers' incentive compensation packages. Nothing else matters.

Good-ol-boy, backstabbing, political quagmire. Pick any group at the St. Louis area sites. It's the same.

Highly cyclical funding environment littered with constant program cancellations, congressional budget cuts, and constant layoffs they call "redeployments". Extremely poor job stability.

Be prepared for the Boeing version of "flextime". They send you home with a laptop and a 24/7/365 job. Plan on doing 3-5 people's jobs. It'll kill you, but it's great for the company's bottom line.

Tech fellowship is a political joke. No career advancement unless a numbered parking space is what you want. Techies not valued, generalists are detested. Company is massively top-heavy with engineers who are ill-suited for management in management jobs.

High-potential employees with whom you want to work to advance your career have already left.

Be prepared to see business decline. The Defense Department doesn't need fighter aircraft or flimsily armored tanks.

Boeing is too top-heavy with management, too rigid in its corporate structure, and too ingrained in its culture to compete with modern, agile competitors. Lots of missed opportunities will come back to haunt you.