MITRE Reviews

Pros

Great work/life balance and benefits. I really appreciated how my departments managers wouldn't always need to know every little thing I was doing all the time.

Cons

Raises aren't the best. I was really surprised how incompetent and lazy some of the people I worked with were. It was embarassing.

Advice to Senior Management

I'm not a fan of micro management, but I really think some people need it. You promote a work/life balance, but maybe a little too much. When clients I worked for had little respect for some people at MITRE, it was really an embarrassment. Senior management needs to do a better job watching the people leading their projects.

Pros

Brilliant work/life balance
High flexibility of schedule
Competitive pay
Amazing benefits
Supportive management
Company stability
Opportunities for growth and development

Cons

No flavored creamer in the cafeteria
Stubborn sponsors

Advice to Senior Management

My only advice would be to put the company out on the radar more and recruit at universities to spread knowledge of our wonderful working place!

Pros

Interns given meaningful and interesting work, work was challenging

Cons

A summer internship is not enough time to fully complete a project

Pros

benefits, networking, great mentorship, cutting edge technology and projects.

Cons

commute can be stressful, environment is government and somewhat conservative.

Pros

MITRE has a very dedicated and professional workforce, and tackles some of the most difficult and rewarding problems for the country. The people at MITRE are our biggest asset. Working with great people makes the day fly by. Freedom to be self-directed and chose from a broad array of projects and tasks makes working at MITRE like few others.

Cons

Extremely high-quality workforce (okay, think about it).
Being dedicated to a specific area or project can lead to being 'pigeon holed' as competent in that area or project.
There is too much emphasis on the internal research project competitions. These competitions waste much time outside the grants to work the research, and yield little results.

Advice to Senior Management

MITRE leadership is generally open and available for direct communication. However, some decisions and decision making processes have recently been obscured. This reduced employee trust at a time we are losing some of our best to high-paying companies.

Pros

MITRE is in most ways a fantastic place to work. The company provides good flexibility and stability, and provides work that makes a difference to the well-being of the United States. The benefits package is very good for the industry.

Cons

MITRE tends to exhibit many older company ideals such as secretive promotions and compensation decisions, cliquish upper management tendencies and a "wait your turn" mentality. Overall, the positives outweigh the negatives.

Advice to Senior Management

Institute clear processes for promotion and compensation practices and beware of watering down the brand in a well-intentioned drive to reduce costs.

Pros

MITRE has a great work/life balance with respectable co-workers, high standard of education and great pay. If you work in the headquarters locations, there is ample opportunity to find something you're interested in.

Cons

MITRE isn't very well know and they like it like that. The work force trends toward an older population. If you don't work at headquarters location, you often go unnoticed and have less opportunities for varied work.

Advice to Senior Management

Management does well, but is out of touch with the non-headquarters locations. High level of bureaucracy as MITRE works primarily with the government.

Pros

MITRE is a learning environment to follow ones vocation and grow as a leader

Cons

Too much focus on MITRE and not enough on the mission

Advice to Senior Management

Empower our creative and innovative staff - they will drive positive transformation in government

Pros

Colleagues at MITRE are among the smartest people employed in government service. At MITRE, one is reminded daily that only 40 hours per week are required. The people and the short hours are the best reasons for a person to work here. The benefits are good. The campus is located in a safe area. The Boston and Washington areas offer broad opportunities for culture and recreation and many of the communities are affluent.

Cons

MITRE is a non-profit and suffers from a lack of simplicity that comes with the direct drive for more money. It is extremely hard for MITRE employees to determine what things they might do to best contribute to corporate success. It is similarly hard for management to identify and reward those things that have contributed success. There's no simple metric. Everyone's doing their best in this framework, but it's just difficult.

A recent survey encouraged people to identify technical leaders and asked if people were being encouraged to do technical work. One need not ask these questions when those two things are happening sufficiently. MITRE's technical base might be eroding.

Plenty of staff appear to merely attend work and don't strive to get something done. If it happens it happens, if it doesn't, it doesn't. Perhaps this is a consequence of the lack of accounting systems for corporate success. The drive to achieve something is underrepresented in this otherwise very, very intelligent collection of people. It's a herd of cats.

Pros

-Interesting projects
-Great benefits
-Great work/life balance

Cons

-Pay could be a little higher