Good Company W/Limited Growth Potential
Pros
Working at NASA Langley Research Center is what makes the career the best. You get to work with a lot of different people and see a lot of interesting things. Jacobs has its good and bad employees like everywhere else but for the most part it's a flexible company with good benefits, and a good understanding of work/life balance. Since this is working on a Government contract things a quite a bit different than being in the private sector. The stress can still be there but for the most part everyone is quite flexible with schedules and budgets. Granted, some schedules cannot shift and you have absolute hard deadlines but nothing is extremely critical for the most part. You will build friendships over the years if you put in any effort. There are a lot of great people to work with at NASA and Jacobs. You get an opportunity to be involved with things that impact space. You will literally see things you would not see anywhere else. You will have some managers who are true leaders that you will respect and rely on and be able to talk about everything with even if its no opportunities and they will understand. Working at NASA will force you to be more aware of safety outside of work. It will make you think more about the big picture of safety.
Cons
Lack of growth. There are only a few places you can move up. Yearly pay increases vary from 1-3% and you typically don't get any additional pay raises unless you fight for more money. Lower starting wages but that doesn't mean you can't start out at Jacobs making more money than the person who will train you. There can be some struggles when dealing with the customer (NASA). People are moved in to management positions due to time with the company and not because they are leaders. You can face some red tape from other employees when trying to get support or help which just makes everyone's jobs more complicated and stressful. You will feel like MGMT doesn't really take much of your input to heart. You will be overworked and your group will be understaffed. If you're good at your job they will load you up with work and not really offer much in the way of support because they physically don't have enough employees to help.
