Pros
The software folks I worked with were great. It is a diverse team of hard workers. Hours were flexible and some working from home was permissible. I did not work a lot of overtime (40/hour weeks standard).
Cons
When I was hired, I was told I would be in a research and development role and that all new work would be done in C#. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. I spent my time working on antiquated source and technologies, fixing difficult bugs that customers had found. The software was poorly documented and requirements were nonexistent. This coupled with a lack of thorough testing led to buggy SW in the field. The original authors of the source code have all left the company or been fired. I never did get to work on the “next” new thing because it never materialized. Site management VPs are tyrannical and delusional. They lack any sort of empathy. Democracy is absent, and all decisions come from the top without soliciting engineering for feedback. This combination produces a toxic work environment where dissatisfaction among engineers is common. For new development, the “Strangler Pattern” is promoted. But the Strangler Pattern is not applicable to our software, as the code is a bunch of mangled spaghetti that lacks requirements or design documentation. Site conditions suffer due to lack of IT and facilities. Some IT tickets take months to complete. There is no hot water in the upstairs bathroom. Lots of little things that would be easy to fix never are. Enter Belden. A hundred-plus-year-old Midwest company that still operates like it is in the 80’s. Stack ranking. Insufficient research and development spend. Delusion that they can grow by acquisition alone. Their forte is making cables, and they are completely lost in high tech. Health care benefits were horrific. Attrition is king. In my short stay I saw many good engineers leave.
