Boeing

Decent benefits Decent work-life balance Easy to look good

Slow salary growth Not enough vacation time Low morale Boring work

Simple solution: pay your engineers more.

When you see your friends getting raises, promotions, stock, and good bonuses at Amazon, Blue Origin, Microsoft, etc., and you are continuously denied a promotion because “you don’t have enough seat time at your current level,” it makes you question why you would even work hard to try to get promoted.

This was a complaint I heard from almost every younger engineer I encountered there. I didn’t stay long enough to run into this myself, but the overall feeling that I got from early-mid career engineers is that there isn’t much incentive to work harder.

That’s also why Boeing has a difficult time retaining up-and-coming engineering talent. I think it has already come back to bite them.