Avoid Fraunhofer CCD at all costs - Systems Engineer Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Employee Review

My comments are specifically in regard to Fraunhofer CCD at MSU I can't speak for other components of the company. To begin you will be paid little to nothing for the amount of work, responsibility, and expectation demanded of you. The work is by no means difficult, but there can be a lot of it, and the over bearing German oligarchy of management in the office leaves no room for exceptions. The senior german 'engineers' have full control and say of office policies, projects, and your hours (no overtime pay). A lot of these decisions/conversations happen behind closed doors with no input from you or other coworkers. I also made a point to say 'engineers' because most of these leaders have little to no knowledge of what is actually going on or are very arrogant in their methods. These 'engineers' are condescending, rude, and often don't even help solve issues and rather just aim to belittle you. Several of them use the fact that they are bilingual to slander other employees in front of them or behind your back. I often had other employees who were german speakers coming up to me and telling me of things they were saying about me, or I would catch them myself and have to confront them. This was a consistent occurrence until my leaving of the office. Trying to just complete your work alongside many of these individuals results in aggravating loops and circles you have to run. Management lives by the idea that its their way or the highway and their intelligence caps off at a point where they will argue in circles with you about projects without understanding constraints/requirements. Organization is completely askew here and it shows right away. Projects are left on standby for months only to be picked up by some new under experienced intern who begins taking over and making changes until they leave 6 months later and it returns to standby. Projects continued for two years with no real progress and only regression because anyone who knew what had to be done had left the company and left no documentation. Not to mention how unprofessional everyone in the office was. Several employees would wear the same clothing for days in a row week after week with visible stains on them. The dress was casual which is fine but when meeting with customers and your gut is hanging out or your shirt is so faded from being over used its quite ridiculous. There is no real business development and cohesiveness within the company. Which can be assumed seeing how most of the changes are made by 5 individuals who don't share that information with anyone below them. They try very hard to market and make themselves appear as cutting edge or industry leaders but simply put they are falling behind and are running out of projects to earn any profit. But don't let their marketing department hear that because they are more delusional than the people that thing working there is worthwhile to themselves or their career. There is no room for growth here unless you want to become one of the ignorant management leaders of the group. Everything is so political, stagnant, and slow here that you won't see changes helping move you along in your career. You get experience but its usefulness doesn't translate elsewhere. And you will never see a pay raise. Fraunhofer USA CCD does not care about American Engineers. They do not care about interns. They do not care about making business improvements. To be honest I think they only care about having their German counterparts in Munich think things are going well. Once individuals reach upper management level they immediately lose touch and begin to hurt everyone below them. Everyone is so underpaid its ridiculous that they get away with it.