Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Reviews

Pros

Mostly great coworkers, flex time for all employees, a comprehensive benefits package, technically there is a lot of opportunity to jump to new or related career paths or for advancement (but see below), beautiful campus and a number of social and cultural events for employees. Truly excellent safety culture (seems paranoid and over the top at first, but the Lab environment has a lot of risks, and you come to appreciate it). You will learn useful cybersecurity tips you can use at home!

Cons

Good luck actually climbing out of whatever career pigeon hole you get put into. While a lot of career path flexibility exists, it can be very hard to access in reality. This company has reorgs every couple of years that consistently employees' degrade pay and benefits. Health benefits have been getting worse and more expensive every year for over a decade. Lab management follows the Neutron Jack Welch school of thought; middle management is inconsistent, especially between directorates. Could be competent and humane, could be tyrants. For a "not for profit" org, they act like the most hard-nosed for-profit companies overall. Pay is about 65-75% of market for all positions except researchers and bargaining. Ablist culture dominates. Whatever you do, do not develop a disability, chronic illness or any emotional distress. Do not become highly experienced and expensive. You will be fired (no matter how many OPAs you have, how many awards you've earned the lab, how many patents you have or what your H factor is) unless you are a Golden Child.

Pros

Relaxed work environment, easy learning for interns

Cons

Bureaucratic restrictions, work package scrambles

Pros

Work-from-home flexibility. Pension. Good work life balance.

Cons

Pay is good for in demand areas but the promotions and raises are stingy.

Pros

Pay is decent and benefits are solid. There are some interesting projects.

Cons

Meetings and charge codes. You have to charge 40 hours per week to charge codes. There is no admin time charge code. We are instructed to charge any internal time evenly between projects we are working on. Then, half of our time in meetings each week. Many of these meetings are internal. This means most of the time logged to a project is not even spent working on that project. Project managers have a hard time understanding why progress is slow but billing is high. This is why... Then, when you say something, it is suggested that you "gift your time." Gifting your time is the company asking you to work after hours and not log your time. This way progress is made on the project and budgets are met. It is all on the developer to save the day during nights and weekends. The charge code culture also does not allow for any improvement. If research is needed for tooling or better processes, it is done with gifted time. This is very bad.

Pros

Hard, interesting problems that support our nation. Cutting-edge technology using cloud environments and the latest in data science. Fantastic work-life balance. Pension plan.

Cons

Salaries are competitive but not on the top end. Small bonus structure. Supporting multiple projects at a time can be challenging.