Pros
Many good co-workers. I have a good work/life balance with my manager almost never asking me to work overtime (only twice in my five years) and always willing to let me take time off for a variety of reasons (even on short notice provided there isn't an important deadline coming up). Hughes provides the opportunity for engineers to either move into a management path or a technical expertise path, and both are highly valued within the company. This decision is entirely up to the employee and you can dabble a bit in both before making it final. Was willing to work with me to increase my compensation package when I asked (I did have another offer in hand from another company that they beat).
Cons
Compensation seems slightly lower compared to other companies in the area (I base this off of the reports of co-workers who have left Hughes). I know for a fact that Hughes doesn't take a government security clearance into account when calculating pay, so if you have a clearance, you can get better offers at other companies. Limited amount of leave (15 days for first 5 years, 20 for next 15, then 25, no sick leave) "Flexible work hours" means you can arrive between 7:00 and 9:00 and leave 9 hours later (with one hour unpaid lunch) at your manager's discretion. There is no policy for working extra time for part of the pay period in order to take extra time off during the pay period. HR doesn't allow employees to input actual time worked, but requires that you put in 8 hours per day worked, even if you work 10 hours. You are also not allowed to put in hours for weekend work. Since there is no overtime pay for salaried employees, you aren't losing any compensation. However, Hughes is losing access to data that could be used to better plan deadlines. Outside of my sub-group, I know of at least a few teams that expect decently regular overtime work. Again, this is without compensation, or even records, so management cannot better plan future deadlines, which means that the next deadline will likely require overtime work as well. No telework option
