Pros
- VERY willing to hire entry level people right out of college - Fun work! At least for mechanical engineers, the work is technically challenging and incredibly satisfying. You're always finding ways to apply your knowledge to something new...I learned about welds, submergence evaluations, and finite element analysis in my first few months here, and that was all beyond stuff I'd done in school. I'm never bored in terms of the work I get here, and more often than not time flies. Plus you're working on submarines! How frickin cool is that? - Great coworkers. Dependent on department of course, but the department I work in and the departments I've interacted with all have a very tight, close-knit, friendly atmosphere. There is a large percentage of younger adults (20-30) which is again great for college grads, but it is also very easy to get along with the older employees. At least within departments, there is a strong sense of everyone being on the same team, which has the nice benefit of minimizing work conflict. - Related to the young-ness of the departments, the social atmosphere and the after-work activities are great. There’s a bar right across from Electric Boat that a lot of employees go to. Mystic is amazing. Electric Boat has an athletic club for stuff from softball to archery, and discounts for concerts (such as in the nearby casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan). There are even nerdier activities like Junkyard Wars that lets employees team up and compete in engineering challenges. - Lots of opportunities to switch between departments if you decide you don’t like the work you’re doing. People have switched from engineering to the shipyard very easily. EB’s a good place to pick up a bunch of varied skills this way and build a strong foundation. - The older engineers are very willing to share their huge well of knowledge with you (up to 40 years of it in some cases!).
Cons
- The older engineers are retiring/dying. - Upper management has been steadily taking away benefits from the employees. New hires (like me) don’t feel it as badly, but this has had a huge negative effect on the more experienced employees. For example, the master’s degree program with EB was recently changed, which hurt a lot of the employees which were in the program…especially those who weren’t grandfathered in and had to deal with a 4-5 year investment going down the drain. Another example is the PTO/sick leave merge, which cut down available time off by a lot. This was especially brutal to the employees who had been here ten years and missed the cutoff. A third example is the removal of family leave, which meant that new parents had to use their recently-reduced PTO to take care of their babies. - Due to this and other removed benefits, many experienced employees are moving on from the company. This has contributed to a huge attrition problem. This wouldn’t be so bad except for EB’s hiring practices. Because they tend to hire exclusively college grads (a pro for us younger people), they are replacing 5-10 years of experience and “tribal” knowledge of the submarine industry with 0 years of submarine knowledge. This has caused a brain drain in key departments that really hurts the company’s productivity and effectiveness. - The other side effect of this is the effect it will have on future new hires. When I came in two years ago, only one other person in my department (out of about 35) had been here less than two years. I had about twenty coworkers around me willing and able to help catch me up to their level. It was a great jumpstart to my career, my skillset, my knowledge base. Now, almost two-thirds of my department has been here for two years or less. The experienced engineers are stretched thin trying to hold up our department’s work (and make up for the people who left), as well as spend their spare time trying to bring us new hires up to speed. Unfortunately, EB’s aggressive hiring practices will result in an employee population that will become less and less knowledgeable of the submarine industry on average. - Part of what contributes to this problem is upper management. Upper management is out of touch and does not listen or communicate with employees. This can be seen in the removal of benefits and their unsustainable hiring policy, but also other things like the parking problem and the inefficient seating arrangements (see next bullet). And it’s not just a communication problem between upper management and the lowest rungs of the ladder, either. Once they settle on a “solution”, upper management seems to ignore supervisors’ and managers’ suggestions to improve the situation. - Parking. Oh man. This could take up its own review. I’ll just say that there are twice as many employees as there are parking spots for. - Related to that is the seating problem. Departments fight viciously over offices, cubicles, and even SEATS. Every room in New London is overfull, people have to squeeze together into open tables that were previously used for meetings. I’m pretty sure we violate a fire code somewhere. - In the pros, I spoke of a lot of opportunities for rotations. This is not to be confused with opportunities for ADVANCEMENTS. For example, I have a coworker with three more years of experience than me who is still paid the same rate I am. This is common. Many experienced coworkers will labor in a job they are now overqualified for, and underpaid for. This is again related to the upper management problem. A supervisor may acknowledge and recognize that you are talented, but the money does not “trickle down” far enough from upper management to give you a raise. EB is very friendly to a lot of parallel movement, not so much upward movement. - IN CONCLUSION: EB is absolutely amazing if you are a college grad or a young adult trying to build a solid foundation. Once you hit 5 years here, the observation is that there is a sudden, sharp drop off in reward for your work, support/attention from the company, and general happiness and satisfaction with life. I would recommend working here for a few years if only for the experience (frickin SUBMARINES!). If you’re looking to settle down, start a family, and cultivate a career, though, don’t expect any help from EB.