Values loyalty over performance - Research Scientist General Atomics Employee Review

3.0
Sep 10, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

San Diego is nice, Torrey Pines campus is very pleasant. A lot of talented scientist to work with. Pay is alright, but I notice a lot of scientists struggling to afford San Diego nonetheless. La Jolla is about as unnaffordable as it gets so you more/less have to commute no matter where you live. 9x80 means every other friday off, and well you get to live near the beach if you are in San Diego, so that is actually super nice.

Cons

Procurement and beurocracy seems optimized to frustrate engineers and stifle progress. Management seems unable to track budgets, risk averse and not open to change. IT is a joke, and tele-working is only tacitly approved and unfortunately not well supported by their archaic IT systems. 401(k) vesting slow pension? is that even worth anything? Overhead rates are crazy high, which basically means labor consumes hours from a project like no other, so it's hard to fund R&D appropriately. Flying F35s overhead are noisy :)

Explore other reviews about General Atomics

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very good work life balance

Cons

9 hour shifts 4 days a week

4.0
Jul 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good working environment Exciting projects Great coworkers (for the most part, like any place)

Cons

Like any maturing company, it has become more and more top-heavy, placing more and more emphasis on project management and milestones, sometimes over bread-and-butter engineering. I could have half the PMs I have now and do a better job

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