NASA Ames Research Center Reviews

Pros

easy life style and mentors are very nice and willing to help

Cons

no management pretty much do what u want

Pros

Good job security. Friendly people.

Cons

In my division, they papers published were not interesting as applications or as theory. I felt isolated from my team. I did not feel challenged.

Advice to Senior Management

Group teams together, encourage cross collaboration

Pros

Working for NASA Ames Research Center is beneficial as there is great job security and there are several small perks, such as using a government car/plane to get o meetings throughout the country.

Cons

Working for the government can cause a delay in several activities, and there is a lot of paperwork and bureaucratic steps to get anything done.

Advice to Senior Management

Although managing a large center is clearly difficult, there are times when management looses track of what everyone is working on and does not keep a close watch on certain people, eventually leading to projects derailing and other problems down the road.

Pros

Flexibility, salary, vacation, sequrity, work load, seminar, collaboration with near univeristies, many events, open discussion, start up chance, government project

Cons

Bad food, tight sequrity check, sometimes boring, too many interns, Hard to get a guest in the campus, lack of

Pros

Opportunity to see different NASA projects and work with bright minds.
Employees are treated well- ergonomic furniture, new work stations, etc.

Cons

The management hierarchy can result in slow product delivery. Budget approval can will sometimes limit resources and limit hiring talent.

Pros

great people, great place, even the security guards are nice

Cons

To slow to change, buildings are old

Advice to Senior Management

have a little more fun, we spend to much time at work

Pros

-very professional
-a nice place to work because you get to be involved in the "NASA" family and learn about lots of projects
-decent pay
-Able to come into work late/early to finish day early/late

Cons

-Team leads not very good at management
-Could be better at dividing work evenly
-Better pay or incentive's
-Longer summer program

Advice to Senior Management

Have weekly meetings with employees to see where the all the employees are
Set up a box for suggestions
Put yourself in your employees shoes

Pros

laid back, creative energy, talented individuals, nasa mission

Cons

community within departments and interdepartmental interaction is low

Pros

Good work-life balance (most of the time)
Interesting work
Pretty nice campus (at least the surroundings)
Work with a lot of smart people

Cons

Very limited career growth
Very limited recognition
Too much bureaucracy - it's hard to get anything done and leads to mediocrity
Management is unable to make any decision - everyone is scared of being accountable for anything.
Lots of politics

Advice to Senior Management

Establish process that would enable you to make some decisions that would support high-performing and high-impact projects and teams in longer term.

Pros

It looks good on a resume.
Freedom to come and go as I pleased.
Very low stress.
Worked on some cool projects

Cons

I was in the aeronautics branch and the average age of the guys I worked with was +50. They had great historical knowledge but were very resistant to any new ideas. Every senior person had projects they had been working on for +10 years and were very protective of anything that had the potential to make their work less relevant or take funding from their pet project. I leaned fast: fall in line with the old timers who control funding sources or don’t get funded.the

Advice to Senior Management

Clean house! Get some new people in there with a can do attitude. It is helpful to keep some old timers for knowledge retention but when the newest hire was 30 years ago that is taking it too far. Recognize you have created a retirement workforce where people can collect 6 figure salaries to solve problems from before the computer age.