Here's the best recent picture of what's wrong at MITRE: On a recent all-hands call for MITRE's ~10,000 employees, Jason Providakes (the CEO) announced significant benefits cuts for all employees, but which specifically targeted long-term (loyal) employees. He stated emphatically that they'd done lots of serious, detailed research on benefits across the industry, and they can prove quantitatively that these benefits cuts are "equitable" and "competitive" and "not a big deal". When asked by an employee to provide this data set, he said that they would not provide the data and - and I'm seriously quoting him here - "it's not rocket science, just google it". The CEO of MITRE told employees that his slashing of their benefits (but not of his own salary, not those of his MANY VPs) is "no big deal" and that he possesses data that would show why he made that decision, but instead of providing it he wants everyone to generate their own data sets manually. This type of interaction with him is becoming more and more common. Jason is comically and tragically out of touch, and this level of inept communication and privileged thinking should be enough for the Board to fire him, but they seem to be in his back pocket. MITRE has NOT historically been, and by nature and intent is not supposed to be, run like a typical company. MITRE is *non-profit* and (until recently) worked exclusively with Federal, State, and Local governments so that our decisions will not be driven by motives of profit, competition, or kingdom-building. MITRE has historically had salaries comparable to, and benefits far better than, a mediocre large for-profit company in order to obtain and retain the right kind of talent for FFRDC work: people who want to make a "fair" and comfortable salary but aren't concerned with chasing every dollar or getting rich from bonuses, and who want to be loyal long-term to the institution and have the institution show long-term loyalty to them. THe current Senior Leadership team, under the leadership of Jason Providakes and with the blessing of the Board of Directors, is slowly and methodically destroying everything that made MITRE unique and valuable to our Sponsors. Most importantly for current and prospective employees, the Leadership team has been consistently reducing and eliminating any benefits or signs of loyalty to employees who have been (or want to be) loyal to MITRE - the most recent beenfits cuts have eliminated any carrot associated with remaining at the company long-term. Jason and his cohorts seem to want to run a Fortune 500 for-profit company - they don't seem to understand the niche that MITRE is supposed to fill. In recent years they have made numerous unwise decisions about finances, real estate, hiring, mission, benefits - decisions which harm the rank-and-file employees directly (financially, occupationally, and emotionally). They've taken money and vacation time away from their subordinates but they themselves have sacrificed nothing. They are very, very bad at communication - shamefully so, since they have a whole paid communications dept - and they seem to live in a very different world from their employees.
