MITRE Reviews

Pros

Very bright colleagues, dedication to mission rather than personal or corporate profit, work life balance, important problems with opportunity to help solve them.

Cons

Too self-satisfied, too many people have inflated view of our stature and reputation in 2011 vs. 1985, resistance to real change at middle level of management.

Advice to Senior Management

Assume nothing from first 50 years holds automatically for next 10 (or in many case, more accurately, persuade your direct reports of the opportunities and challenges facing MITRE and our sponsors that are significantly different).

Pros

Great salary, benefits, retirement program, work life balance

Cons

Not always busy
Not that challenging
Work doesn't make a huge impact
Lack of teamwork

Pros

Benefits, salary are more than competitive. Work life balance is a mantra, and meant.

Cons

Current team management has bad business model. Knows it, but can't change. Few and far between training opportunities due to bad model.

Advice to Senior Management

Make teams get expertise internally before new hires.

Pros

Great Work-Life Balance at MITRE

Cons

All employees are smart and retention is very high. Unfortunately that means many employees are quite old.

Pros

- Constant stream of fascinating work, based on both academic papers and classified intel/research
- Opportunities to work with geniuses
- Fantastic benefits (403b matching, time off)
- Travel opportunities
- Employee-first mindset
- Technical managers excellent
- Feels like a small company sometimes
- Good work is rewarded financially and with public awards
- Encouraged technical output - journals, conferences, etc.

Cons

- Lots of paper pushers outside of the very technical departments
- Intern pay low, (but then again, full-time pay is high)
- Too many acronyms
- Feels like a huge company sometimes

Pros

benefits
stability
diverse highly educated staff
safety in numbers

Cons

regimented employee reviews lack real information about capabilities and accomplishment
dead wood here and there
byzantine promotions track

Advice to Senior Management

Use "for profit" techniques in a "not for profit" environment
Clean up the politics in the promotional track
Equalize promotional probability between technical people and managerial people

Pros

A lot of resources, flexibility to work on a diverse selection of interesting problems

Cons

It's a large company so it lacks the personal feel of a small company or start up. Sometimes this puts heavy limitations on what you can do. A lot of work requires a security clearance

Advice to Senior Management

Give every employee a small percent of time to explore new ideas.

Pros

good benefits package, interesting work, capable management with good strategic directions. direct access to high level customers, can show case important skills

Cons

pay is about average but benefit package is good so it makes up for it. promotion is slow since it is a non-profit organization.

Pros

Great compensation, administrators who understand that there are sometimes more important things in life other than work.
Challenging work, always something different, something new and exciting.
Free range to grow however large or small you want.

Cons

None really, the work is hard but that's not really a con!

Advice to Senior Management

Understand sometimes we have many projects we are working on!

Pros

The company provides a good balance of work and family, freedom to telecommute, good retirement plan, and good work place ethics.

Cons

It is very difficult to obtain projects and experience outside your immediate area of expertise. The work sometimes involves too much powerpoint-jockeying and there is too little involvement with real engineering research & development.

Advice to Senior Management

There is too little opportunity to work with real engineering research and development. The concentration on powerpoint slides does not give enough of a sense of accomplishment.