Textron Aviation Reviews

Bad economic times have made management very callous and the employment culture cutthroat and very political. Benefits package has been effectively gutted. Company is not family friendly. Performance Management Process is used to ambush employees that management does not like regardless of performance. Very little if any advancement possibilities. Management does not value experienced professionals but does want cheap interns, recent college graduates, and foreign workers.

After one year at Textron, I think it would be accurate to say that Textron is among the lowest tier employers to work for out of college. To give some background, I majored in electrical engineering and Textron was my first job out of college. I am from the midwest and worked at their Wichita, KS location as an electrical engineer. The interview process was by far the easiest, which should have been a red flag. What stood out most was the lack of ANY technical questions during the interview process. At no point was I ever asked to verify that anything I said on my resume was true. The interview process was not planned well, with one of my interviewers never actually showing and another had obviously forgotten that he was supposed to interview me. It became clear that nothing was verified because they had no expectations. What did I go to college for? If we are going to be taught from scratch with no requirement beyond having "a good attitude", why require a degree at all. Needless to say, I got the job. After starting, it became clear that there was no organized onboarding process whatsoever. Worse, they had hired me in anticipation of future work, but in the time I was there, that work never came. Due to a lack of proper management, this left me digging for projects to work on, so I could feel like I was useful and not wasting my time. It didn't help that I was not from Wichita, and Wichita is certainly not an active city to live in. Management would say that you can just travel due to the low cost of living, but flights are more expensive from their small airport and of course their below average cost of living is matched with a below average salary. The shortcomings don't end there. If you ever intend on utilizing benefits, you'll be sorely disappointed there as well. The medical benefits are among the worst I've seen. That was a constant complaint I heard from other employees who had been there for many more years that I'd ever wish to be. If you're looking for things to do outside of work to help you become accomodated with the area/meet coworkers in a non-professional environment, you're out of luck again. There are no official clubs/orgs for employees. Additionally, Textron is THE place to work as an engineer in Wichita. If you ever intend on moving on from the company, that means you leave Wichita. However, if like many of my coworkers, you've found a partner or even had children, you're bound to the city as well as the company. Furthermore, Aviation is inherently a very cyclical industry, and job stability reflects that. Many of the long time employees who were bound to the city and company as mentioned, talked of the many waves of lay offs that they had lived through and the stress that it brought. It should also be no surprise that being in the middle of Kansas leads to essentially no diversity whatsoever. But if you're a white churchgoing male who likes fishing, drinking beer, and watching Nascar on the weekends, you'll fit right in. This isn't to say that this isn't the right place for some people. For example, if you're older, have children, and don't want work to require much of you, and want to stay in one slow-paced environment for the remainder of your run-of-the-mill midwestern existence, Wichita KS is certainly a good match. But for a fresh grad with any semblance of aspiration, I certainly recommend against it.