Good quality employees, little confidence in leaders - Senior Manager BAE Systems Employee Review

4.0
26 Apr 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Generally very high quality of employees (and more diverse than it used to be in the early days of Detica). Some pockets of the business are excellent to work in, with supportive managers who are encouraged to give both positive and (constructively) negative feedback. Work is interesting and there's the opportunity to change career direction if you would like to. There are opportunities to learn a lot here and take on responsibility - there are also now opportunities to look for positions within wider Bae as well.

Cons

The leadership (board level) team seems to find it hard to structure a company that can support anything other than a niche consultancy business. The daily operations battles that have to be had to try to run a products or services business (both of which they do a lot of!) successfully are ridiculous. The operations managers have way too much influence, they should be there to support the business strategy not drive it! Another major issue is the recent introduction of a Chief Marketing Officer at board level which is driving the centralisation marketing activities, which is fine in itself, but is being implemented in such an aggressively dictatorial way that people are leaving to get away from it. Recent remuneration rewards have been benchmarked way below where they should be, particularly for certain niche skillsets. Whilst people are doing what they can to correct this, the senior leaders need to be/be seen to be more pro-active about correcting this.

Explore other reviews about BAE Systems

5.0
23 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great people and pay, 401k benefits.

Cons

Tough work environment and difficult work load.

4.0
22 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good people competitive pay imo

Cons

Don’t like to promote from within

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