Recent hires at just below the C-level have been troubling. In general, the trend seems to be toward "strong" personalities who are not good listeners or collaborators-in some cases, one might even use the word bullies. Professional courtesy in our culture has taken a strong hit. These hires are generally on the support side, but I expect there to be negative impacts to the product lines as a result as we lose more staff as a result. While our new values documents talk about respect as a Battelle value, there is a large contingency at the senior leadership level that are not following that in any way.
In addition, we're not quick moving. That's not because staff are resistant to change, it's our risk averse culture based on some of the security requirements of our kind of work. When good change is possible, you'll find that staff embrace it.
While my experience has been good, there are many who have suffered from the "sink or swim" culture. If you can build a network yourself, you should be alright. But if you want a managed mentoring program, you may need to look elsewhere or at least pick your manager carefully.
Benefits are decreasing as part of cost cutting. They aren't horrible now--just market competitive, where we used to be better than average.
