Pros
Decent pay, very flexible hours( location dependent), manager typically wont micro-manage your day-to-day job. Some jobs can have very high technical learning curve but generally interesting. Very good brand and hence a very good company as a first stepping stone in your career. The work atmosphere is friendly. Some really smart engineers in the company.
Cons
Good brand tends to attract all kind of wrong people e.g. bad manager and bad engineer who habve very little technical knowledge but know how to trash-talk. Worst yet they will get promoted quicker than you. Management are extremely process-driven and incomprehensible, similar to the British government really. Bad business is bought and good businesses are sold by clueless senior managers that are oblivious to technology. More senior management come from an external accounting and financial background than in-house engineering department is one major reason. IT is badly managed by EDS (a HP company) and as a technology company, everyone is given only 50MB email inbox. Engineers are not trusted with computer admin right so most people do engineering using excel and Matlab. Alternatives are: work at home in the evening (unpaid just to do your job) or out-source the technical work. HR and purchasing in the company have become so big in the organisation that engineers have become second class citizens. HR and purchasing graduate salary are higher than graduate engineer salary. Starting salary as a engineering graduate is good, but company has a grading system that is design to squeeze you in a long run. Promoting to a new grade usually happens 1 year leaving the graduate scheme, then subsequently 2 years and 3 years. Salary increase via this promotion route is capped at 7.5%(used to be 12%) per increase in grade. Technically after working in Rolls Royce for 6 years from ending graduate scheme and has a chartership, your increase in salary would be around 25%, not taking into account of inflation. As a combination of IT and bad management, more and more technical work are out-sourced. The day-to-day job is more or less turned into managing suppliers to do work and I feel unsatisfied as an engineer.
