MITRE Reviews

Pros

Ability to apply skills in support of the Government.
Ability to make decision and apply them to sponsor support.
MITRE IT Infrastructure and support.
Benefits before retiring.

Cons

Requirements to support the Government in their offices as Action Officers and then accused by MITRE Management of going native.
Out of sight and out of mind attitude when it comes to Salery increases and and Promotions.
Need to continually provide self accomplishment Sound Bytes to Management to achieve status in the "Iner Circle".
Workloads that demand 60-70 hours a week to be successful.
Elimination of all Retiree Benifits when you reach 65, even thought you were paying 100% of there costs.

Advice to Senior Management

Get real and find out what is really happening in the employee trenchs, get rid of the AC-6 dead weight, provide competative Salery Increases (vs. what the Government does) and eliminate the massive Bureacracy that has increased over the years.

Pros

Best things are the benefits, the work-life balance, the ability to move around and find interesting and new challenges, and the quality of the technical staff.

Cons

Downsides include:
- A perception that MITRE is the best and no other company knows as much (not reality)
- The fact that MITRE organizationally reflects many of the bad characteristics (stovepiping) of the sponsors we support
- The unwillingness of management to terminate poor performers and reward top performers (lots of dead weight)
- The fact that people stay forever so there advancement opportunities can come slowly

Advice to Senior Management

MITRE needs to operate a little more like a private company and little less like a government agency. There should be more focus on performance, as it seems like the top people (who are truly the best in their fields) often have to carry a lot of dead weight to succeed. Eliminating some of the leff impactful folks wouldn't impact the work product, but would allow MITRE to more appopriately reward those who are doing the heavy lifting. A commitment to work-life balance to often seems to mean the stars work and the average folks balance.

Pros

Talented individuals, open-minded, free-thinking, and cooperative. About 20% of the people have PhDs and more than 60% have a Masters.

Cons

Bureacracy which is not a surprise at any medium to large sized company. Federal work can be challenging, working with the latest and greatest technologies, but it can also be limiting in that your work mainly in areas of defense and a few civilian federal agencies. A broader involvement in other industries would be nice but not possible.

Advice to Senior Management

Coordinate better in a matrix type environment. Focus more on management who have the ability to handle personnel issues. Technical leaders may need to be just that technical leaders but not necessarily managers because they were successful leading a technical effort. There are managers who should not be managing people - people are the greatest resource and strength of an organization such as MITRE.

Pros

Good work. Good people. Good sponsors.

Cons

Long promotion timeframes and small salary increases.

Advice to Senior Management

Think outside the systems engineering (BS, MS) mentality in terms of people. Only choose middle managers based upon "business" and "people" skills. Technical expertise is a distant third in priority.

Pros

Smart colleagues, Opportunities for education, Flex hours, work/life balance. Excellent 401K.

Cons

Promotion are slow to get. Salary raises meager. Frustrating client (government). Excepting 401K and education, benefits are not that great.

Advice to Senior Management

Devise a career path for techies or you will lose them.

Pros

People are very proud of the work they do.

Cons

Many people have been here a long time are are resistant to change.
The company operations are often inefficient because each center operates independently.

Pros

Great challenges provided by the customers.

Cons

slow to change and biased by previous successes.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to improve direct communications to the staff.

Pros

--Great work-life balance (they really mean stick to 40 hrs or close to it)
--Great benefits--25 days combined PTO that you can roll over and cash out within certain constraints; health etc; great retirement matching
--Collegial/collaborative culture
--Strong commitment to professional development (I'm learning how that works)
--Strong commitment to the public mission--they really want to help government work better

Cons

--Like any place, there can be a mix of calibre of professional (and some surprising promotions, as a result)
--Not exactly a con but a complexity: MITRE in fact is a corporation that hosts multiple FFRDCs (federally-funded research and development centers), and the different centers appear to have different personalities. At least in the center I'm in, there's a "matrix" thing going on with folks in mission groups who are dedicated to understanding a client and client mission very well, and other folks in practice groups who bring specialized practitioner expertise to client engagements. My center is still working on how the mission and practice groups work together.

Advice to Senior Management

Be sure to recognize those who truly distinguish themselves through their performance. Keep building the calibre of new hires.

Pros

Work Life Balance
401K match
Top notch employees
Skilled employees in position

Cons

Promotions are rare. Raises are small compare to public companies.

Advice to Senior Management

If you recruit and employee top talent reward them as such.

Pros

Opportunity to support the Gov. in an unbiased fashion.
Benefits.
Ability to easily transfer between internal organizations.
Wide breadth and depth of corporate knowledge that is relatively easy to access.

Cons

The mean salaries for the professional ranks (AC ranks) are at best average.
The spread of annual salary increases is extremely narrow, i.e. little difference between a bottom performer and a top performer of the same professional rank. There is little monetary incentive to do an outstanding job.
Promotions are largely based on 'who you know' as opposed to competence.
The management style is very 'old boys club' and rather stodgy.
There can be the appearance of conflict of interest in the relationships between upper management and retired Gov. officials as well as between Gov. sponsors and relatives (e.g. spouses) who work at MITRE.
The technical supervisory ranks (AC-5 and above) are not given the time nor charge codes to properly manage their staff. They must charge full time to a contract while simultaneously managing staff.

Advice to Senior Management

First, clean out the dead wood from the AC ranks. How can MITRE consider itself a good custodian of the Government's money when it keeps non and very poor performers on the payroll for years and years?
Second, be ruthlessly scrupulous about cleaning up all apparent conflicts of interest due to the hiring of retired Gov. officials who can bring programs into MITRE and the employment of spouses of current Gov. sponsors in the organizations which support that sponsor.
Third, give your AC-5s and AC-6s in management positions the proper non-direct charge codes, with sufficient funding, to allow them to properly manage their staff. They should not have to take the time out of their hide.