Harris Corp. Employee Reviews for Windows Systems Administrator

What do you like about working at Harris Corp.?

"There are a lot of great people in the rank-and-file."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Don't bother unless you want to be a lemming and agree with your management all the time--even when they're pathetically wrong. If you do seek a position at Harris, be very, very careful about which team and/or business unit you will be working in. Most of the managers are bullies, though there are a few good ones out there--and they aren't universally loved by the other managers."

What don't you like about working at Harris Corp.?

"Very long working hours: 60-100 hours per week. Understaffed; they're too cheap to hire more employees to help achieve a better balance. High-stress and high-demand; no, everything is not a number one priority because something still has to be done first, which means that something has to be done last; please don't call me every 15 minutes for a status update; really, I'll call you when the status changes, so leave me alone and let me do my job. Managers are not held accountable for their own poor decisions and/or lack of decisive action; think before you react; make a decision and stand by it; cease the disciplinarian motivation because it doesn't work very well and only serves to destroy morale; stop playing the blame game; if a mistake is made or something bad happens due to unforeseen circumstances or circumstances beyond your control; don't throw people under the bus because you make them work all day, then work all night, then be there bright and early to work all day again, and then they make a mistake they normally wouldn't have. Retrain your HR department staff to appropriately handle unethical behavior; don't make someone feel like it's their own fault when they are sexually harassed; don't allow managers to intimidate and threaten their staff; don't counsel employees without their knowledge only so they can find out about it later; revamp your performance review procedures and policies to accurately reflect employee performance rather than a manager's personal dislike."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Have an open-door policy. Improve communications between management and the employees. Put a halt to the intimidation tactics and crack down on managers who play the blame game. Make managers accountable for the performance of their teams/business units. Review the HR policies."

"High-stress, high-demand, micro-management, finger-pointing."

What do you like about working at Harris Corp.?

"My peers. There were a lot of good people in the rand-and-file."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Don't. Although there are a lot of great people there who are in the rank-and-file, and there is a relatively small number of good managers, the corporate culture doesn't allow for independent thinking. They call it insubordination when you disagree with the higher-ups, even your own manager. They've even counseled employees, who never even knew they'd been counseled. They discovered it in their performance record after the fact. They don't pay very well; they don't reward hard work; the raises are pitiful, if you get one at all; they regularly pass qualified people over for promotions and hire from outside instead; they don't care how many hours you have to work because they're understaffed. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago Harris was a good place to work. But not so today. They are subpar, and downright unethical in some respects."

What don't you like about working at Harris Corp.?

"Harris fosters a culture of high-stress, high-demand operations where there is 0% work/life balance--and they don't care. The average work week in IT was 60 hours, with 70, 80, or even 100 hours in a week not uncommon. One of the perks is the 9/80 work schedule (work 9 hours per day for 9 business days, then get the 10 day--Friday--off), but the IT VP stated in writing that this perk was a privilege and you could have no expectation of actually getting your day off. If anything goes wrong, even if it was an honest mistake or a problem caused by circumstances out of your control, the first thing they do is look for a scapegoat, and then you are counseled. Most of the managers are micro-managers who expect you to check in with them every time you do something and ask for status multiple times per day, sometimes even every 15 minutes when there is an unexpected outage. On the other hand, they rarely spare the time to help you when you need it; essentially, they tell you to get the job done and do what you gotta do without giving you the authority to accomplish anything; and then they counsel you because of you weren't able to get it done on time, which is usually the result of trying to negotiate with other teams or business units who won't let you work on their servers. The maintenance windows were ridiculous: Sundays from 7:00 AM-1:00 PM and Tuesday and Wednesday from 2:00 AM-5:00 AM once per month. Every project is approached in a half-a**ed manner. There's no planning and not enough time allocated to implement; there's no accountability for the managers; and the project managers don't seem to know what they're doing."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Get it together. Your people are your most valuable asset, so you need to treat them like people--not numbers on a spreadsheet. Hire more staff so your employees aren't working ridiculous hours. Build accountability into every project--for yourself, too. If you're going to present a mandate to implement specific technology to the organization, enforce it. Business units should not dictate the project or implementation schedule, pushing it off indefinitely while the people who are assigned to perform the implementation are criticized and reprimanded because the timeline is slipping. Stop pointing your fingers every time something goes wrong. It's IT--not basket weaving. Sometimes bad things happen due to circumstances beyond your control and sometimes people make mistakes. We're human. Don't throw good people under the bus just so you can stroke your own ego and tell yourself that you solved the problem. Hire people with real talent and keep the people who work hard and strive to do the right thing. You'll eliminate the high turnover of employees in the IT department because--hello!--IT professionals don't need you. You need them. They can go get another job."

"Integrity and commitment to excellence."