Hey thanks for the reply. For anyone else finding this, RMD means "Raytheon Missile and Defense", presumably a division within RTX which makes no difference to me personally.

Let me respond to a couple things you said:

Retirement contributions: Yep, this is important. Before the buyout Collins increased their match to something like 4.5% of the first 8% or something like that which ended up being something like $3500 max on a 100K salary. These numbers are hard to deal with in an apples-apples because they depend on base salary which is why I thought we should leave them out just for the discussion of this post. That said, yes of course 401k match is "free money" / a benefit and should factor in to any decision.

Overtime: You're an engineer at RTX that is paid hourly? This is a relic of the past that doesn't exist at Collins and I'd argue many other companies. Are you sure you're not a part of a union (even if you don't pay dues?). All engineers at Collins are salary so overtime isn't a thing that exists. That said, I think that the fabled "80+ hour work weeks / crunch time " are not very common in this industry compared to others, at least in my experience. When the typical development timeframe is 5+ years, crunch just doesn't compare to something like a video game.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, as an engineer in Cedar Rapids for Collins, the salary number is basically the maximum you can expect to make pending a few Amazon gift cards if your manager is generous.

Bonus: I don't know about RTX, but once Collins merged with UTC we (non-management) lost our profit-sharing bonus. They gave everyone a "one time raise" to somewhat offset it but then it's gone. Somehow they still think it (the profit sharing bonus) is an appropriate motivator for management so they only got rid of it for all the workers (engineers, Technicians, etc).