Ford

There is interesting and challenging work here if you are fortunate enough to get into the right department. Company policy requires you to stay 18-24 months in a role even if it is not a good fit for you, so take that into account. If you are young or a new grad, the company has some decent benefits for parental leave, new parents, etc.

Main focus is on new graduates or those with 0-3 years experience. If you are older with an established career, you will get sidelined and ignored here.

Very little actual career development opportunities; you will be told to go and watch videos at your desk. Never more than one week of training provided per year, and the burden for approval is huge. Forget meaningful conference and seminar opportunities.

Compensation increases are very difficult and typically consist of 2-3% paid out to everyone once per year, regardless of any other parameters. This is known as "merit increase" at Ford.

Toxic, no trust environment. CYA at all times!! After hiring, the goal is on financial reporting to management; there is little or no engineering integrity.

The company does not produce; it assembles. All vehicle components, hardware, software, etc., are sourced out to suppliers based on requirements. Lowest bidder wins.

Engineering at this company simply means writing requirements for supplier bids and verifying that the requirements have been met. Project managers and financial bean counters have veto power, not engineers.

The company is also technologically backward; even critical operations and decisions are handled by emailing spreadsheets back and forth. No major corporate ERP system is in place and used throughout the company.

Huge question marks around future tech such as autonomous, as most of that (if not all) has been farmed out to other companies.