Pros
PTO, holidays, fellow technicians, Temperature controled
Cons
I am a former employee at Beyond Gravity, input from Current employees at Beyond Gravity contributed to this Review. The first example should be enough to exploit the kind of company this is. They called a technician at home who was out on disability to fire him and told him he only had insurance until the end of the month. They (senior leadership) told the technician they needed to hire some one for his spot but it was 5-6 months before they posted any Technician job. Legal or not to fire someone on disability is just being a terrible human being. Its not like this technician was a new hire, he was a 6 year employee. The company (Beyond Gravity) is for sale, yet leadership still calls it a “start up”. Whats frustrating is the company had great potential to be a good aerospace company but the Swiss hired senior managers in the USA to set it up for failure. Senior Leaders have a very high turn over at Beyond Gravity but the position is never filled with anyone better than their predecessor. The shop floor supervisors are glorified “Yes Men” so Leadership rushes and takes short cuts on structures to get it in the oven, thru NDI so the company can get a Milestone Payment from ULA to boost revenue making it seem like a more attractive company to buy. Terms such as “use as is”, “it will get fixed on the other side” and “at risk” are used way to often for an aerospace company. If ULA ever realizes they make 2-3 times (at least) more milestone payments than they do actual deliveries Beyond Gravity would probably go bankrupt. The company tries to sale the benefits and pay to justify it being a good company. If its so good then why sale it? Just about every single employee (technician, engineer or manager) feels relieved, happier and healthier after leaving that company (Beyond Gravity). Training and pay: The training process/pay was a good way to compensate employees, the more you knew the more you got paid. The company (Beyond Gravity) even messed that up. They hired a training “coordinator” who grouped assessments together so you have a “jack of all trades and masters of none” Its been almost 7 years and they still haven’t figured out how to train and pay employees accordingly. Then to make it look good on paper they fudge the numbers on 2nd and 3rd shift so they can justify getting work done quicker but its in poor quality. No Perfect Product Delivery when newer technicians are Level 3 and 4 overnight. When it comes to raises in pay or promotions HR isn’t involved. What that means is basically a lazy, always late employee can get the same if not more of a raise or promotion than an employee that shows up on time every day and contributes to building flight hardware. An example, the last 2 lead technicians have been terminated. PTO: There are about 25 Technicians in one area at Beyond Gravity yet Management will only let 3 Technicians off per day. Thats poor people management skills, if a technician request to take THEIR time off it should be approved and work schedule planned accordingly. Beyond Gravity doesn’t give technicians adequate notice for overtime that disrupts your family life/work life balance yet you can’t use PTO when you want too. Overtime is comical at Beyond Gravity. Its usually mandatory with short notice. Technicians lost 4/10s and went to 5/8s for better coverage and less work place incidents/mistakes (transferring a Face sheet without reinforcement being installed) in a longer 10 hour shift. But when Leadership is poor at their job the first knee jerk reaction is to force Technicians to work 10 hour shifts and Weekend to cover Leaderships incompetence. Beyond Gravity is “Schedule” Driven. Yes, you read that right. A company claiming to be an Aerospace Company is schedule driven. Heres how Beyond Gravity Prioritizes: 1. Schedule 2. Work Instructions 3. Safety* 4. Quality. *Beyond Gravity claims to have been accident free for 1000 days, but in those 1000 days 2 technicians had to go to doctor to get stitches from being cut at work. Apparently its not an accident until an employee misses 3 days. Which coincidently is how many days you get off work for bereavement. The way Beyond Gravity is operated day to day is by no means an Aerospace company. Senior Leaders are more like telemarketers (they just tell employees and customers what they want to hear) , which they are good at selling the “vision” but its easy with anyone with a slight bit of intellect to see through the smoke screen thats put up. Quality of technicians being hired is questionable at best. The starting pay is a flat rate, guess its too difficult for Senior Leaders, HR and a training coordinator to come up with a compensation plan for new hires. For example, a individual hired from Meow Mix will start out the same pay as some one with 3-20 years actual Aerospace Experience. In closing, I hope a real Aerospace company buys Beyond Gravity, wipes the slate clean and keeps the good technicians (about 10-15 out of 100) to make good, quality Aerospace Structures like it should be done.