Ford

The pros of the company are that:

1. You get some excellent work-life balance. In the PD engineering area, you only really need to be in at work between 9 and 3. There is time where you have to work hard, but it's usually followed by long periods of downtime.

2. At the moment, it's reliable. You may not be working on the most current technology, but we're definitely a sustainable company.

3. If you get a good boss or group, you could stay there for a while, and there are some good bosses/groups.

4. If you have a family, this is a great place to work since you'll be getting out at 4:30 almost every day.

1. Poor leadership in some areas of the company leads to frustrating decisions.

2. Everyone there is old. The last statistic I heard is that less than 15% of the company is made up of people under 35 years old, speaking from the Engineering side. This translates to the culture you experience. If you think you're going to be here working on something cutting edge, or getting experience that will give you an edge at another company, you will not get it.

3. There's no career progression past the 5-year mark unless you're a marked person. I've witnessed multiple people in their late 20s and early 30s looking for career advancement quit out of frustration when their boss refused to tell them anything other than, 'It'll take time, like 5-10 more years.'

4. It's like pulling teeth to do some things. In the research area, if you don't have a Ph.D., then you don't get listened to.

5. There's really no HR structure set up to allow you to move around the company, which is a shame because that's one of the perks of a big company.

6. The campus in Dearborn is old, really old. While it has a cafeteria, the fact that the buildings are in serious disrepair kind of takes away from all of that.

You need to fix how career progression/mentoring works in the company, reinvest heavily in the infrastructure, and become a much more nimble company.