Pros
Work can be challenging, meaningful and in the best interest of the nation. Most of MITRE are very intelligent, sharing, helpful people with knowledge and skills. Most MITRE staff still believe in the "MITRE value"
Cons
MITRE is a STE (people work/units for govt sponsors) constrained, expensive, systems engineering FFRDC in a very tight economy trying to leverage their small, internal research budget for value impact. So, you'll see some work change-up as they readjust to the realities, and fear from leadership as they change to meet the challenge. e.g., internal, "research whatever we want", (also called the self licking ice cream cone) mentality is shifting to becomecustomer-impacting Innovation process. Yes, this means some internal winners and losers. Also, as you see in the reviews, some locations or divisions believe and act on the MITRE promise. Some don't. This is a bad manager problem, all companies have a few. e.g., The internal job-jar posts a part-time coding task (25-30%), but requires you move to DC. What? ... yet, another division supports teleworkers, to accommodate family/life issues. Some managers just aren't managers, they're engineers. So, managing their department work flow (jobs available vs. staff coverage) isn't a habit or process! So, that was why you were looking in the job jar for work!? Some managers used to be called "resource managers," and now most suggest that its not their job to help find work for their staff. Now, compare this to the (roughly equivalent in size/prestige) big-5 consulting shops: Each department is run like a mini business, managing workflow, mapping staff capabilities to requested work. See the difference? For many, many years managers were never trained or incented (e.g., there was no charge code for management overhead work, you simply charged each of your staff's project codes for small amounts of time - to manage them) MITRE is learning these business improvements in an historically engineering-heavy culture. That is why MITRE has never been a good "first" company for new graduates: lack of support, higher expectations, managers are really engineering-smart people vs. people-managers. ... But, now they're attracting and needing younger folks (due to costs, skills, etc.) who get jaded by the "manage yourself" management style.
