Avantages
First off, this review is actually for United Rotorcraft, the engineering division within Air Methods. Since this is specific to UR, it's relevant if you're looking for a job as an engineer, drafter, certification person, etc. The only reason it matters is that technically, UR is considered it's own company but most outsiders wouldn't realize that, and in fact, when I interviewed, the job was advertised as being with Air Methods and not United Rotorcraft. Continuing on... The pros are that it's a job. And you can pride yourself in working in an industry that saves lives. And the engineering manager hired in 2015 has done a decent job of helping to hold the department together and provide what's needed to his employees despite an overall squeeze on everyone.
Inconvénients
There is apparently some tension between Air Methods and it's engineering subcompany, United Rotorcraft. Speculatively, I think this might be because engineering was done much less stringently a few decades ago than now, in part because regulations were less strict back then, but the consequence of this is that engineering is more expensive now than it was in the past. Air Methods wants engineering to be cheap again, so they choke their subcompany to death trying to cut costs. My biggest frustration at Air Methods has been management's reactionary approach to everything. I can't count the number of times I've seen panic about something unexpected, followed by a group of people being pulled off their current project and retasked to "put out the fire." Inevitably, this is followed by more "fires" from pulling people off other projects. This cycle causes an environment which feels unstable and stressful. Technical data here is difficult to work with. Old data is incomplete and erroneous. If you know of a better way to do something, it will only be implemented if it's cheaper than the status quo. So if you have a suggestion to improve a process or a better technical approach to a problem but it costs more, it will be ignored. There are not enough bathrooms. I can't stress this enough. Imagine this: you have to do a #2, but both toilets are taken. This is an everyday occurrence at the popular morning and post lunch times. So instead of taking care of business, you get to waddle back to your desk and squeeze cheeks and pray your colon doesn't rupture. You can try one of the other buildings, but those are full, too. I believe pay and benefits are pretty low here compared to other aerospace companies in the area. The mass flux of employees to 2 other local companies known for good benefits seems to back this hypothesis. Turnover is SUPER HIGH. Many are fired/laid off, some leave for better paying jobs as just mentioned, and I think some just leave because the environment is toxic. The consequence of all this turnover is there is almost nobody here who knows anything about legacy data (and again, terrible documentation so you will wish someone did know what was going on), and not a lot of expertise on anything. There is only one manager for the whole engineering department. He is in meetings all day, every day, along with anyone else with the authority to make any decisions. So if you need to talk to a manager or get a high-level decision made, good luck. Poor resources to do your job, and difficulty getting more resources, due to the situation with nobody around with authority. Poor IT support, and lots of IT problems. Somehow, even with all the layoffs, there aren't enough desks. So you'll likely get stuck at a card table in a conference room or in an area that should be a hallway, but they found a way to cram a desk in it. I'll go ahead and point out that the HQ campus is on the airport, but most of the people at the airport don't actually need to be near aircraft to do their job. So it would make a lot of sense to move those people (basically all of AMC) off the airport, which would also probably be cheaper, and then there would be plenty of room for the people who do need to access the aircraft. But that would be logical, so that doesn't happen. If you are considering a job here, I think you should first figure out if turnover is still high, as that would be a good indicator if the company's health has improved from the time of this writing.
