Pros
I don't think MITRE is a bad place to work, but it is quickly falling behind in the industry. From an early career perspective: - Salaries aren't mind blowing, but I feel it's still strong and competitive. It was the highest offer I received for my field by a decent margin. - Benefits remain pretty good... for now. However, they seem to be slowly and steadily degrading them, so who knows where it stops. The education benefits are currently amazing. - Work is challenging and engaging; I feel I'm putting my engineering degree to good use and am consistently improving my technical skills. - Relative stability; not as much of a threat of mass layoffs like you are seeing in tech companies - Good work-life balance. I've only had to work after hours a handful of times, and most of those weren't 100% necessary. This may vary by position.
Cons
- The "find your own projects" model should theoretically allow you to get on projects that you really enjoy, but it often leads to frantically searching to fill a coverage gap and taking whatever possible work comes your way. - RTO is the latest in a series of management decisions that only act to degrade employee morale. There simply isn't enough office space to accommodate everyone, so employees are finding themselves working from random hallways across campus. How is this supposed to make us more efficient, again? It feels like an arbitrary change even when the previous policy was working perfectly fine. - Lack of impact. While MITRE certainly has had a lot of success over the years, it seems a large portion of the projects don't pick up steam and end up sitting unfinished for "possible future funding". - As others have mentioned, upper management has a major disconnect with the employees. I understand that sometimes less-than-ideal changes need to be made, but poor communication of those changes only makes the issue worse.