Software Engineers, Look Elsewhere - Software Engineer Boeing Employee Review

1.0
18 Aug 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Flexibility with worklife balance, stability and job security.

Cons

Huge software engineering turnover and for good reason. Management don't know what it means to develop software, so most projects end up crashing and burning miserably. Your manager is going to have some random degree and experience that has nothing to do with software, and their sole purpose for existing is to do politicking to navigate the bureaucratic mess that is Boeing. Tech fellows provide zero leadership as they are just as clueless about software development as management is. You will hear comments from them such as "Is C++ a managed language?", and no one can tell you why this is simply horrifying to hear from a high-level software engineer when your target language is.... c++. This is a side-effect of an interview process that is 100% behavioral and 0% technical. The type of interviews that politicians and psychopaths excel at. Every project has the stench of bad, bad, code smells. Multi-million dollar a year projects with 20-30 software engineers contributing with absolutely no standardized workflow. People literally just force push to master at will. No code review, no testing, copy-paste code, no CI, no lint or style guide, and huge amounts of resources spent reinventing (poorly) the wheel instead of using COTS software. If that doesn't make you recoil in horror read on. Very, very limited job growth opportunities. Ask any team and you'll find that there are level 1 engineers that have been working there for 4-5 years. If this is by design so that it encourages job hopping within Boeing so you get a more varied experience in your career, great! But wait, there's a high chance that even if you find an opportunity elsewhere, you won't be offered relocation. That 10k+ to move across country to get a miniscule raise is coming out of your pocket. This means there's no incentive to actually stay within the Boeing system. Your current wage is actually used as a negotiating strategy against yourself when finding a new job of interest. Management will often tout "But the benefits are great!" This is absolutely not the case. Health care insurance is strictly worse at Boeing than the two other companies I've worked at since. 3.6k deductible and a 7k out-of-pocket max with monthly premiums that are exactly the same as the traditional plans I got at the other companies. Pay is woefully under market value for a software engineer. If you're a mechanical, industrial engineer, I'm sure it's fine. But it simply doesn't match the lucrative market for software engineering, as Boeing lumps all engineers into one bucket. If you're stuck in the Charleston area, then I'm not sure there's a lot of better choices. If you're a young software engineer reading this fresh out of school thinking this is your opportunity to put a fortune 500 company on their resume, save yourself from wasting your time with what will be the inevitable. Do not come to Boeing South Carolina. The young software engineers that Boeing captures through its university outreach program leave in droves for a reason. I suggest embedding yourself in a tech city with multiple alternative opportunities if your first choice doesn't work out. If you think I'm exaggerating about any of this, due your own due diligence and please try the simple test of asking your interviewers brain dead CS questions like "what is a compiler?".

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5.0
18 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work life balance Lotsa opportunities

Cons

Growth is slow Over complex bureaucracy Under utilize

3.0
27 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Easy going, nice benefits, free further education (masters/PhD). Great for an engineer starting out who needs to dip their feet in the pool of engineering for a few years and to get a great 401(k) match at the start of your career (compounding growth). Great for late stage career due to the benefits and solid enough pay in a low cost of living area

Cons

pay-scale lagging, no emphasis on learning new things, no punishment for people who are bad at their job. After working for 4 years, I feel like I should have jumped ship after 2. I haven't been given meaningful work that really challenges me in a while. Now I feel pigeonholed into staying because I have enough years of experience that I really should be considered senior, but I haven't been given work that reflects what I senior engineer should be capable of. Now I'm trying to jump ship before it's really too late. If I stay here another 2 years I think I will be genuinely unemployable and will have to stay at this company forever.

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