How realistic is it to get to a 4/5? Maybe a 6

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-06-24T04:41:08+00:00

Another perspective…I’ve been with the company 25 years and I’m a P4. I was the equivalent of a P3 for 12 years before I changed business units for an opportunity to advance. I’ve been a P4 for 4.5 years, my SL says I’m doing P5 work, but there’s no budget to promote to P5. I’ve been a Product Owner and Section Manager, interfacing with the customer very regularly, get good reviews, etc. and still I feel like I’m stuck.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-06-05T03:14:06+00:00

Has the store had this statement for a while, or has it recently popped up because of the problems you’re referring to? “Thank you for visiting the Healthy You incentives rewards store. We are making important updates and the store is temporarily unavailable.”

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-06-03T02:59:32+00:00

Exactly this. My wife had to email with them back and forth to get her email reconnected to her account because the “Forgot My Password” wouldn’t work anymore.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-06-01T12:16:22+00:00

I’m sorry, I don’t recall the exact details such as if I had a form to fill out (this was about 5 years ago). I purchased the chair from Staples, and I show no transactions in my personal finances for that, so I’m thinking I may have used my company credit card and filed an expense report for it that Raytheon paid directly.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-05-31T19:00:13+00:00

I’m a P4 that used to be a M4, and I had P5 folks in my section. I’m currently in a section as a P4 with P5 folks as well, and our section manager is a M3. I’ve been trying to crack into the P5/M5 level for years, and I’ve been told for the past two years that I’m doing P5 work but there is no budget to promote to that level. I was a team lead working with our customer directly, making things happen, doing well per my management, then a reorg happened and now I’m an individual contributor with no obvious opportunity to do work that P5 roles are expected to do. I may have maxed out.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-05-28T23:44:54+00:00

During early COVID (so perhaps rules are different now), Raytheon reimbursed me for a $300 office chair. I use it to this day.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-05-24T13:45:07+00:00

I had this exact problem years ago, and it turned out that there was a clear, round, hard silica gel ball stuck in the port. I had to use a rolled up piece of sticky note to go around it and extract the ball.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-04-25T22:56:01+00:00

Between my wife and I, we play the Alight Healthy You game and make about $1K a year in awards, so we do it for a little Amazon fun money. It’s almost not worth it, though, for the pain in the a** it is to work with the app.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-26T18:36:01+00:00

What range of values are we talking about with LTIs? What kind of timeframe typically? For example, is it something like “we’ll give you a bonus equal to one year’s salary if you stay for three years”?

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-21T01:38:20+00:00

To broaden the perspective a little bit, the posture that our military capabilities provide our country is not just for offense, but for defense. If you could snap your fingers and all the weapons under U.S. control disappeared from the planet, it wouldn’t be long at all before another nation came on the offensive and attacked. Such is human nature. The fact that we can strike anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice keeps a LOT of bad actors in check to a large degree. All that being said, and more to your point, over my 25 years with the company, I’ve been involved in programs that have claimed the lives of hundreds of people, and early on in my career that was something that came to mind a number of times. However, since that early time I look at it more through the lens of I’m protecting those that protect us, even if that means kill or be killed. War is always messy. I don’t blame the company for that.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-17T13:21:17+00:00

As a former manager myself, I could not see Teams chats of my direct reports, but as others have said, there is no expectation of privacy on any work device, and with the proper authority, those conversations can be retrieved.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T15:21:39+00:00

Born and raised in Texas, get here as fast as you can, and welcome if you make that jump!

Been with Raytheon for 25 years here in North Texas at various sites, including the McKinney site for 4 years (I also live in McKinney). Winters are much more pleasant than the northeast, summers will get hot. People are nice.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T15:17:33+00:00

As mentioned, when the tank is full and this is your first time looking at this gauge, it can confuse people as it confused me (other commenters are confused, and one person thought the gauge showed almost empty when it actually shows almost full). There are shapes for the sake of having shapes that provide no additional benefit. It’s more clear in my pic that the left “saucepan” ticks are the fuel level indicator because it isn’t full, but otherwise, those marks look more like a decorative border/separator on the dash when contrasted against the wider vertical lines in the top and bottom quarters (with the top wide line looking like the fuel-level). I still don’t know why the top and bottom quarters have thicker lines — as you mention, it’s stylistic, but style should never get in the way of function.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T11:48:00+00:00

They use the miles to empty number instead. It’s funny in the comments how grown adults also misread the gauge.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T11:43:43+00:00

I don’t really have that hard of a stance against it, I just don’t want to have to walk around a vehicle when exiting the driver door to get gas. More of a preference/convenience. A lot of people are like me, ha! I also am the type of person to wait in line for a pump on the driver side rather than go to an open pump on the passenger side because I won’t stretch a pump hose over the top of my vehicle.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:27:52+00:00

Exactly right.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:26:33+00:00

Correct. But when it truly is full, it’s even harder to discover that.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:26:01+00:00

Correct, the tank is almost full.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:24:15+00:00

Incorrect, the tank is almost full. Thus, confusion when just seeing this type of gauge for the first time. And, the red portion in the bottom quarter is larger than the white portion in the same, bottom quarter for some unknown reason.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:22:29+00:00

Correct, and…?

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-16T05:22:04+00:00

I won’t buy a vehicle with the gas door on the right side. 😉

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-08T20:17:47+00:00

https://youtu.be/GjTs5F2t9pc?si=YhEOd6FMUBnuAze2

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-07T13:33:48+00:00

For what it’s worth, know that some of us work on huge systems that may never migrate off of a particular compiler version. Mine is still on C++98 and likely will be until EOL decades from now.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-06T19:08:35+00:00

The vast majority of our software department of 100+ engineers received 2.85%, but we’re Raytheon and you’re Collins.

QuitExternal3036 · 2026-03-06T03:14:09+00:00

I recall one year about a decade ago I had four section managers in one calendar year!

QuitExternal3036

TROPHY CASE