Boeing

Boeing has some of the best benefits in the industry. They pay above average, have no-cost medical and dental insurance, and even have some decent employee benefits like low-cost health clubs and discount movie tickets. If you do even a marginal job, you are considered better than most of your peers.

The unfortunate part about engineering at Boeing is that they are moving away from having any core engineering competencies.

The design engineers don't design; they look over partner designs and sometimes fix them. The analysts review stress notes from partners. The production engineers, like me, don't do any real engineering; we oversize bolts and tell the shop to sand out scratches.

I haven't found any part of my job to be rigorous or challenging, and I find that the longer I work there, the more I feel like I'm losing my technical edge. It is such a large "machine" of a company that it is often hard to find a place that you can really excel, especially because nobody has much responsibility (everyone has just a tiny little bite).

Also, because Boeing has been warring with its unions for years (and engineers are union in Puget Sound), they are currently warring with SPEEA and retroactively cutting/billing us for the education benefits they already paid out.

Find ways for human resources to actually provide placement for employees.

Don't hire people that are experts in fields like composites and then stick them in a corner to do some very minor and non-challenging jobs.