Raytheon

I worked for a company called SAIC and another called MSIS alongside people who worked for Raytheon. You need a clearance (interim at least) because you're going to probably be dealing with government contracts. My particular working experience with them was working on military vehicles set up to host satellite signals and provide networking and communication infrastructures in field environments. We built most of the hardware and configured it using a KVM built into that setup. So, they're legit, and they pay well. My companies I worked for never drug tested me, and only did it when people exhibited signs of substance abuse. More on reddit.com

I worked there for 11 months. It is like the Walmart of engineering. Not a bad place to start a career but not a great place to work.

Someone told me there are two kinds of Raytheon employees: those who love it because there is nothing to do, and those who hate it because there is nothing to do...

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If your offer is in the R&D side of the house, that's a very good place for a new graduate to get some experience. They have a real culture of helping young engineers grow. Apply for the fellowship program and earn your MS on their dime.

I don't mean to imply that the production engineering side is no good, but the nature of the work offers less opportunity to build on the theory you studied in school.

It's very common for new hires to leave after a year or two. It's bad form to leave in less than a year, but if it's not working for you, move on. No one will think anything of it.

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I've never worked for Raytheon, but I'm at another similar government contractor. First off, these companies are really big and diverse so take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm not even CS/CE (my degree is EE) and I think the software challenges are incredibly lame and simple. Everything is standardized so we don't ever get to develop anything from scratch or solve problems that haven't been solved before (it's a lot of tweaking existing solutions). But the WORST thing (in my opinion) is that they want "well rounded engineers," meaning they expect me to do a large chunk of project management in addition to any lame semi-technical stuff I get to do. I have no interest in project management and this wasn't mentioned to me in any of my interviews. So if this is something you care about, I'd suggest clarifying this with them before accepting. On the flip side, some people really like project management and have no problem with it. As someone who only wants to tackle fun/complex software challenges, it's kind of my nightmare. More on reddit.com