John Deere Employee Reviews for Software Architect

"Adventurous design goals using GPS tracking data bring excitement to the workplace."

What do you like about working at John Deere?

"Opportunity to build automated GPS driven vehicle guidance to the farming industry. The challange of working on embedded software with agressive goals in a rugged environment."

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

"A long term of experience in building embedded code will be attractive and a thourough knowledge of C++ will be necessary. Use of the STL library will be a plus."

What don't you like about working at John Deere?

"A culture of complacency and non-communication pervades the company. Archaic testing sofware designs dodder along on the command line and fail to provide either interactive screens or the ability to review the data intelligently. Inadaquate control design produces tracking ringing responses that a junior designer would recognize as due to incomplete tuning of the tractor mechanical parameters to the vehicle velocity and target track. Shop management refuses to admit that a more successful design is needed despite the evidence. Shop management intefers with access to the design code needed to complete the assignment."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Top management is capable and competent but must stop listening to subordinate leaders who have only excuses for many missed timelines and a design that fails to meet the company product goals. Introduce a seconday developer to deliver a visual simulation the supports the existing embedded code design and get error plots that everyone else has moved to using in the last 30 years."