This company’s work environment has become extremely toxic. Those that remain a part of the leadership channels live in fear of their superiors, and consequently, there is a lot of back stabbing to protect their own careers. The recent vax mandate that the company implemented aggravated bad behaviors that turned employees against one another.
While other companies were waiting for the outcome from the courts on the legality of the vax mandate, MITRE, a trusted unbiased agent, decided to unleash its own ideology against its employees. In numerous all-hands meetings, the words “grace and respect” were always given while the company gave no grace and no respect towards those who questioned the vax mandate. Even very senior technical experts in the company were marginalized and silenced for questioning and presenting analysis contrary to executive opinion. Leadership used strong handed tactics to isolate sectors within the workforce, keeping management in the dark while executives singled out people that they no longer found desirable, eventually resulting in hundreds of terminations, coerced resignations and retirements. HR and legal took over operations and interrogated people, questioned their sincere beliefs, and then denied them exemptions, ultimately leading to involuntary terminations. Yes, they have given the token exemptions to a few, but the company discreetly fired numerous employees in this fashion. They offered no appeal process and gave no grace period. The termination was harsh, swift and decisive. In its wake, it leaves behind terror in the remaining employees. The message was crystal clear to the workforce, if you step out of the company’s agenda, you will face the wrath of HR and legal.
This system engineering company has lost its focus on providing solid system engineering solutions and is instead focused on social reformation. It thrusted itself into social justice, climate change, and DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) to increase its ESG (Environmental – Social- Governance) score; it now prioritizes social reformation over systems engineering and service to our sponsors and general public. Social justice warriors will feel at home here. This is listed as a con because MITRE is supposed to be an unbiased, non-partisan, system engineering company that acts in the public interest of all Americans. If it prioritizes ESG scores, they might as well rebrand themselves as a social engineering company vice system engineering company. The ESG scores maybe high, but the company’s ability to deliver on hardcore engineering is compromised.
