Northrop Grumman

"Work hard and keep your nose down. You will have to prove that you can do the work just as well as the men. Once you’ve proven yourself, you will do well with a good manager. If your manager is not supportive, move to another department if possible."

"Parental leave policy is less than optimal and leadership is heavily white, male and determined to stay that way. "

"Be mindful that most of your superiors will not be very diverse in their backgrounds or personal characteristics and will have been working in DoD for a long time. Women can succeed at the company but may feel they have to work harder to do so and maybe have some challenges with the culture and mindset. As a whole, the company does promote and try to improve diversity and has won awards for it. But my experiences have felt different, showing the company is still maturing. "

"The company has a lot of formal structures for integrity and inclusion, such as ERGs, but in reality there is no inclusion. This is the first job in my entire career where no one ever bothered to get to know me, or even have lunch with me. Any of the relationships I created were relationships where I was the one who took the initiative to cultivate. This translates into disrespect and dismissal of opinions and authority. In terms of processes and policies, it is at least 10 years behind industry. The tools I had to work with daily clearly hadn't been updated in 20 years. They think that a 9/80 schedule means they're ahead in flexibility, when they don't even allow you to flex out of the pay period. The PTO is awful, there is no sick time, everything is taken out of PTO, and you barely acure anything the first two years. If you're in a 9/80 schedule, you need to use PTO for 1 hour on every holiday. The bureaucracy is ridiculous, including for firing people. It took me almost a year to fire a direct report who was a clear threat to others, including myself, because HR moved absurdidly slow with their processes. I had more than one manager who over scrutinized my work, and not that of my male peers, and would only agree to my opinions after a male coworker had stated the same thing. I could go on and on forever... "

"Not a lot of women in leadership, but you can still have a good career."