Pros
Fantastic people. Also, some of the best engineers I've worked with in a long time. I've never found them unwilling to help. Rather, they are very busy and do not have time to hand hold engineers who are not ready for prime time or want to come to work and coast. The bonus gives us incentive to move with a purpose. On that topic, the bonus is no BS. I usually *never* drink the Koolaide. But after two bonus seasons "I'll take a glass of the cherry please" Contrary to some commentary I've found on this site, I've found most of the managers to hold a great deal of consideration for their engineers. There is also not a lot of the finger pointing and gamesmanship crap from management here that I've seen at other companies. For the most part, there is very little micromanagement and you have free reign to get the job done. Some of us who tend to be a bull in a China shop spend a bit of time to make sure we don't step on toes, as there could be a *bit* more direction. However, I would characterize this as a personal preference vs a generally accepted fact. To put the positives in perspective, I've turned down a 40K+ pay bump twice to stay here. This is not a statement that the pay at CymSTAR is horrendously low. Once you add in the bonus, it's actually quite good. Rather, the intangibles I'd be giving up were worth forgoing the pay bump.
Kontras
I would agree with the prior reviews' assessment that sometimes we do not have the best possible team leads, mostly because they are new and the company is trying to train more. This is largely due to company growth and moving from the model of a master craftsman shop to the mass manufacture model of a larger company. My observation has been that the team leads are often selected on the basis of prior technical achievement, on time delivery, and knowledge of the inner workings of specific programs, as there is no real dissemination of data provided on projects other than immersion and time served. Worked for some really good leads and a few not so good. The not so good have been great guys and know their craft, but not really geared to lead and not prepped before being thrown in the deep end of the pool. This results in some wasted time as other reviewers have noted. I didn't have to surf the web for months, as one reviewer noted, but I've more than once had to kill time or take PTO as I did not have resources to proceed on tasks assigned. Bottom line, if you require a highly structured environment & constant work pace with minimal lulls or rushes. CymSTAR is not for you. If you are *not* an uptight Type A personality like me, and you are willing to work hard when a crunch hits, you'll probably like it. I will also agree, to a *limited* degree, that there are management favorites or, as I jokingly call them, the "Star Team". The do tend to get the best assignments with a chance to shine, and if it goes pear shaped, they will not be the ones left holding the bag. I've in the position of being looked at as less than competent a few times now for situations that were not of my making, and management has not really appreciated the scope of this or the demoralizing effect it has on the ones who are left with the stigma of a bad project. That said, I would disagree with the prior reviewer's statement that favorites are "protected".