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A troubled company for some time to come

Product Creation Applications Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Ford for less than 1 year
January 8, 2009
Dearborn, Michigan
2.0
Doesn't RecommendApproves of CEO
Pros

Never-ending challenges, high technology, good pay and benefits. Opportunities for professional growth are good to excellent if one takes advantage of existing resources and opportunities.

For an IT professional like myself, unless you are a project manager or analyst, you will have a more stable career path rather than as a coder or deep technical specialist.

Cons

Bloated management structure, few opportunities for promotion, confrontation averse.

Current work atmosphere is one of doom and gloom, and adds to the pressure of meeting deliverables with additional staff being fired on a regular basis.

There is a huge cultural inertia that prevents new ideas or process changes from taking place due to embedded policies, organizational silos, and personal fiefdoms.

Until Mulally can focus on changing the culture to position it for future growth rather than firefighting to save the ship, it is probably best to watch safely from afar.

Advice to Management

Ditch the entitlement mentality and find original entrepreneurial motivations to be able to compete.

Drastically thin out management structure and make middle management actually manage something.

Cross-functional cooperation is still hindered by kingdoms, needless bureaucracy, politics, and a "never say no" mindset to reporting managers.

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