COM DEV

A typical day began with full breakfast, sausages, bacon, eggs made fresh by order. We featured breakfast specials twice a week, sometimes eggs benedict, sometimes pancakes or waffles. Every day had two fresh made soups, one meat and one vegetarian. Two lunch entrees were made each day as well. All fresh products, all made from scratch.

Like any large industrial building, there were times of employee turnovers. Often large groups of people were let go, and later replaced. So the learning would be from each of these new groups of people as to any allergies or sensitivities that may not have existed in the former group.

Co-workers were wonderful! We operated with a kitchen of 6 people, and everyone worked together as a team. We all learned the various aspects of the cafeteria and kitchen so everyone was able to help each other to ensure all chores were completed.

There really wasn't anything hard about the job. It was all timing for the food prep and pre-prep for the following day when the product allowed for it. 

The most enjoyable and exciting part of the job, was that we catered to many internal caterings within various departments in the company, and once they knew I baked, they would always order cakes or cupcakes from the cafeteria. This then added to cafeteria revenue. July 1st Canada Day, I had an order for 300 Canada Day cupcakes. These were made with both red and white velvet cake swirled together in the cupcake, and topped with red and white swirled buttercream with a white chocolate maple leaf.  Two weeks later, one of the departments celebrated the completion of an important project and ordered 300 blue and white cupcakes.

A typical day at work would be when you got in you would check which tests were ready. You'd start working on your projects individually until the morning meeting was called and we could see priorities. The rest of the day consisted of working to get all priorities done effectively. 

I learned how to manage my time better, how to help get team goals complete, how to use equipment that I'd never seen before and work on military grade devices. 

Management was good and ran a monthly meeting where people were given opportunities to facilitate projects for overall team improvements. 

The hardest part of this job was moving up in your field or to another field. 

The most enjoyable part of this job was the work environment and how helpful and friendly people were on my team.

There are a lot of really good people working at COM DEV, especially on the front lines of engineers, technicians, assemblers, service group staff etc.  

Middle management can be quite mercenary when the company isn't making money - preferring to lay off (permanently) the highest wage earners despite the loss of experience. 

There is an element of cronyism at play here and promotions/salaries are not always correlated with performance.  

In general though, it is a good company to work for as long as you're in one of the more stable business units.

Two great companies where every day was full of challenges completely different issues than the day before, my knowledge was increased every day by observing and follow up implementations done to the production and quality departments, I was able to supervise 15 employees, diversity was a strong factor to work with, increasing my management skills nothing I would say was hard at work and I enjoy every day doing things I like measuring, collecting data, analyzing data and providing solution to production to make the company more efficient and reducing lead times to become more competitive

ComDev is a well established ecosystem of old boys and their rigid thought patterns. It is inflexible to change and any sort of situation that demands adaptation. Suggestions and good ideas are often put forth only to yield the usual status quo. Many people complain about their jobs and how miserable they are there, but because they're pigeonholed in a specialized industry, they lack transferable skills to move on. In essence, it's a company where dreams go to die.

COM DEV developed space hardware for the CSA and NASA. It was very science driven with many engineers and project managers. My typical work day involved greeting guests by phone or in person, assisting the staff and senior management. Formatting documents for CSA submission. 
I learned alot about what is involved in the development of space technology which was very interesting.

Review and conduct materials testing to evaluate conformance of materials or processes to standards set by the industry.  Fast paced environment with great teamwork displayed by both management and co-workers.  Overall, a very enjoyable job.

I worked for this company for over 3 years. The people there were great to work with. They went out of their way to help you out.
Management was good. They cared about their people. They were easy to work for.

Decent place to work with good work life balance environment.

has great potential, but it's unrealized. overly process heavy and increasingly difficult to get work done. too many managers who give conflicting direction or no direction at all.

Working at COM DEV: company overview and reviews

COM DEV

COM DEV ratings

Salary satisfaction

Job seeker tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected