Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Reviews

Pros

Second to none work family, workplace environment, critical/challenging work, job satisfaction, benefits

Cons

I would love to live closer to the Lab if my family wasn't already established in the Rockville area.

Pros

Friendly, collaborative place to work with lots of opportunities to learn and advance.

Cons

It is hard to get your foot in the door.

Pros

Benefits such as 401K and education are great.

Cons

I was an Operations Coordinator (OC) for AOS and was looking for future career advancement within the business side of APL. I was told by my supervisor and a senior AOS lead that it will be difficult to find the next step up as an OC. Some of the recommendations included switching departments or wait years to become a section supervisor or POM. Middle management took program managers' and project managers' needs and feedback on their OCs as bible and disregarded the OCs' requests for assistance. For example, the program/project managers will repeatedly ignore your emails, calls, inquiries but middle management will blame you for not trying "more". The lack of accountability and leadership displays from the top yet they blame lower-level employees for them. Overall: limited career advancement and poor treatment if you are not technical, pay is average, people GOSSIP, lack of remote work, and senior management do not show that they care.

Pros

Very good work life balance, good benefits, nice perks, and good sense of job security. I value the highly flexible schedule. I feel like my salary is fairly competitive, and don't find myself stressed out with the amount of work I'm having to do most of the time. They seem to value having their employees continuing to learn, as is evidenced by the education benefits and large selection of training available (paid for by them).

Cons

After working here for over 8 years, I don't think I can really point to a project that I worked on that ultimately made a big impact anywhere. It can be very demotivating at times. At first I thought it was unique to the first group I worked for, but after being in several groups, I've come to accept that this is just how things are here. The management likes to assure us that we're doing very important work - it may be true for some projects, but I don't think I really agree with that assessment as a whole.

Pros

Love it here. Interesting, impactful work, great people, the maker space is awesome, really supportive culture. It is easy to get too much work if you can’t say no when your plate is full, but you are allowed to say no/not right now. Benefits are really good, I’m really happy with the health care, retirement matching, short term disability paying out at 100% with no buy up, and being able to get a lot of life insurance without answering medical questions. Leave is pretty average. Salary is very competitive.

Cons

Only 7 payed holidays, one of which is the Friday after thanksgiving (which is nice since I get to keep that day of PTO I guess). Really weird that we don’t get all the holidays the government gets given how much work is for the government. Also only two weeks of paid parental leave, which is super weird to me since APL is really progressive/generous in most other benefits.

Pros

Great people, low pressure, good pay and benefits. The good science is GREAT! (but I didn't work on that)

Cons

The waste here is INSANE. The good projects like the Pluto mission are amazing of course. But what people can't see from outside is the projects where the obvious only purpose is to waste piles and piles of government money with absolutely no real goals or purpose. The problem is not from the APL side, it goes all the way up to Congress, but it's still horrible to be part of. If you don't care, great! Lots of random tasks exist here for people to do who don't care about watching millions of tax dollars set on fire for no reason, and the working conditions are better than lots of places if that's your thing.

Pros

education benefit is great, use it and then leave as soon as you can

Cons

Managers will actively work against your career. They will also try to nitpick reasons to pay you less constantly. I've seen managers derail someone's work because their direct report was paid more than themselves. They will try to use passion as an indirect way to abuse your free time. If you're not careful, managers will take advantage of you, especially if you're a minority. Managers consistently root against minority employees by looking for performance faults. I don't recommend this workplace for anyone, as soon as I get my Master's I'm leaving.

Pros

People are friendly and helpful for the most part.

Cons

Too much commuting. Not enough remote.

Pros

Great compensation and benefits, commitment to the employees. Middle-management is really great.

Cons

No ability to work remotely in many areas.

Pros

Interesting work, good work life balance

Cons

Minimal telework options depending on projects