Sandia Reviews

I have been working at Sandia full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Good name to put on your resume, or get an internship at.
Benefits competitive with industry and so is starting salary, just don't expect for your salary to stay competitive after hiring on.
Good job security for now.

Cons – The compensation does not keep up with the industry, you can expect a consistent 2.5%ish raise each year unless you are highly ranked. Salary compression is a huge problem, expect people who hire on 2+ years after you do to make more than you do after working there for 2 years.

The new total comp system they have rolled out is horrible in its implementation. They have imposed set bins for ranking their employees. So during performance review with the new system new employees are typically ranked "2", which is the lowest you can be without risk of getting fired, for the sole reason that they are new and a set percentage of the work force has to fall under the 2 category. You will not be ranked higher than mediocre unless you are really liked by the senior management. The entire total comp system was implemented to break out the support staff from the technical staff and decide their pay based on the market value of their line of work. However all the technical staff are still under a single market base comparison (~80% of the work force) so all they succeeded in doing was paying support staff less and paying the same amount for research staff. If you are a low paid engineering major, such as civil, you will get paid exactly the same as a comparable chemical or nuclear engineer who typically make much more in the industry. The system also seems to be flawed in what they compare your salary to in the market, it doesn't seem to increase with experience. So after a few years HR says you are overpaid and your raises drop to next to nothing.

The work here also seems to be sub par lately, I've seen some truly awful work openly presented that uses computational techniques which are just not valid for the problem of interest yet no one brings it up. Management views any criticism, even if constructive, in a negative view. Only positive things are expected to be said about others work, even if it's wrong. One of the new performance review categories is behavior, so if you critique others work you are views negatively and hit with it during performance review. There are very few negative things that can happen to you for doing poor work, if you don't deliver you are typically still ranked average and can just coast along for most of your career with little repercussions. Mean while to truly succeed you have to work weekends and get lucky with a lot of your projects to get any recognition from management, who typically have no idea what you work on.

You can expect to be promoted from a Senior to a principal member in 7-10 years, no faster no slower no matter what you have done. Promotions in our center are decided by the director also, so all the senior managers have to like you before you are promoted so if your program competes with them at all or they have something against you, they will continually block your promotion which has resulted in at least 3 people leaving to go to academia or industry. Even the one who left for academia (which is typically paid lower), got a 40% raise over what he was getting at Sandia. Others have gotten raises as high as 50%, the president of the labs has stated that he has no intention to compete with the salaries of google, BP, Slumberjer, etc yet these are the companies who make up the industry so the entire total comp system is a bit of a mystery.

Advice to Senior Management – Make the total comp system more transparent to employees, fix the promotion system so one senior manager can't block someones promotion for years.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Sandia as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Looks good on a resume
Pays decently

Cons – -Interns were very overworked and expected to produce the same workload as full time employees even though most interns also were full time college students.
-The hierarchy within organizations caused a lot of drama and communication problems.
-Interns were not trained well on what was expected of them and constantly felt as though we had to guess on how we should produce our work.
-Managers and bosses would often not like the work you have given them, but only tell you so after your project was done, rather than giving you guidelines during your project. Negative feedback was often all thrown on you at all once, and it was very overwhelming and discouraging.
-This job was a very high stress job with little reward for what you did. Just about all the interns in my organization as well as some full time employees felt this way.
-It was a regular for interns and employees to be pushed the point of breaking down during work and crying.

I eventually quit because I couldn't handle the stress and unhappiness from the job. I don't regret quitting at all.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn to treat your employees and interns with respect and properly train interns.
Understand the difference between full time employees and interns, knowing that part time interns who are also attending college cannot possibly produce the same workload as full time employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sandia full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – 9/80 work-life schedule promotes life outside of work, but many people take advantage of this and just use it to take a 3-day weekend

Cons – Incredibly bad bureaucracy. Nonsense engineering projects are the norm. Basic science projects get shoved to the backburner or just not funded at all.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Sandia

Pros – 9/80 work shift and that's it. Nice and quiet work environment, like working in a library. No distractions from modern technology, like cell phones, streaming music, or employee coffee shops.

Cons – Below average pay for non R&D staff. Mangers that are not technically proficient. It's all about reducing costs, including freezing salaries and slashing benefits.

Advice to Senior Management – Better pay to make up for locating in Albuquerque. Fire the incompetent managers, don't just shuffle them around. Let managers stay in position for longer than three years before rotating them. Less office moves, three in one year is ridiculous.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sandia

Pros – 9/80 work schedule, i.e. every other Friday off. Well compensated for the amount of productivity required. Employee expectations are extremely low and easily met. On-site gym in CA. A week off between Christmas and New Year's, but it's not really extra time off. It's in lieu of other holidays in the year.

Cons – Moving up on the technical side means being able to sell programs to sponsors in DC. If you're not willing to find and adhere yourself to a sugar daddy in DC, then you need to find a sugar daddy internally, i.e. someone else who's selling programs in DC, who has a project you can charge. Yah, technical staff selling - some with no aptitude or training, so they give away the store for a dollar. Unless you're admin or a manager, you always need projects to charge to cover your time, so it doesn't create a team environment. One project one day, and maybe moved on to another project next week/month/year. Everyone is a free agent. Endless training: cyber security, information protection, time-charging ethics, insider trading abuse, safety hazards, slips trips and falls, etc. Seriously, about a dozen mandatory online training modules every year that's so boring, I want to slit my throat with a butter knife. Speaking of knives, there's only a small deli, no cafeteria in CA. If you want to go out for lunch, you have to go out and drive somewhere; nothing within walking distance. Security check line every time you enter. CA site is an after-thought, country cousin to Albuquerque. This is most evident in the medical insurance providers that the NM office chooses, which have limited physicians in CA. In general, an insane amount of bureaucracy and paperwork. Many of the administrative staff members are clueless as to how the lab runs, where revenue comes from and have no sense of timeliness or service. You get better service at the DMV than with some of the Purchasing folks.

Advice to Senior Management – This is a technical laboratory, but many of the senior managers are out of touch with technical work. They spend the majority of their time in meetings or traveling for Business/Program Development. However, there are no objective (numerical/quantifiable) metrics for measuring their performance or success. Management is also out of touch with outside industry trends. This is particularly sad in CA, given the vicinity to Silicon Valley.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sandia

Pros – they offer flexible work hours for employees.

Cons – benefits declined dramatically in the last 10 years. not much incentives to stay with the company. sandia started to hire less competent folks.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Sandia

Pros – Median level of financial compensation.

Cons – no career opportunities. No career guidance from upper management. Percentage of befits come out of your salary.

Advice to Senior Management – It would be good if you watched out for your employees rather than your own backs

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend