MITRE reviews

When longtime CEO Al Grasso retired, a new executive team swept in eager to make a lot of changes. Change isn't necessarily a bad thing, but so far what we've seen hasn't inspired a lot of confidence. We just went through a disgracefully poorly managed round of layoffs in corporate operations. Layoffs are never exactly fun to go through, but when done well, they can be healthy and leave the organization more efficient. Not just from a cost standpoint either: a healthy layoff gets rid of people who are slowing the organization down. But that's not clearly the case here. We really miss a lot of the people who either retired early or were shown the door, and it's harder for the organization to be effective without them. But worst of all was the feckless, drawn-out way this was all handled. A department head and even a director with 30 years' experience were laid off right along with individual contributors. Even if there's good reason to get rid of people in those positions, it's cowardly to use a RIF as a vehicle for that. Maybe that seemed neat and efficient from a labor lawyer's perspective, but consider what that does for morale: there's a Game of Thrones-like sense of dread among the staff because not only could any of us be next, but we don't even believe that we can get reliable information from middle management because they're all evidently standing on trap doors too. It effectively cuts off any way to quell rumors and move on. In a relatively strong job market like we currently have, I worry we'll lose even more of our best people who'd rather not work under the current COO. We're watching a lot of the things that made MITRE such an excellent place to work 10 years ago get eroded away.

Almost two years ago the Board of Trustees was reportedly aware of significant integrity issues with their choice for new Corporate Leadership and that gave them pause. Unfortunately, they proceeded with their choice and now the ethical environment at MITRE is crumbling. Corporate Officers are now lying to staff about matters both mundane and significant - related to internal operating decisions and decisions about our sponsors. Lying and character assassination with Corporate Officers spreading falsehoods about subordinates to other subordinates is common. Questionable changes to time charges at the end of the fiscal year, seemingly with the purpose of inflating revenue to meet Officers "targets", have been occurring. All the while, other Officers knowingly allow false statements to the staff to stand, either unwilling or too afraid to take a stand. One new individual performance measure for managers is focused on "behavior" and the reduction of complaints coming from staff. It seems the Corporate Officers want the complaints to stop, and if they do not, the subordinate managers are to blame. MITRE legal will likely respond here, as they have in other posts, that the ethics hotline is available and they will investigate. Unfortunately, when multiple ethics complaints about lying by an Officer that oversees one of the Divisions in the Public Sector were made, the response from the ethics hotline was "Please be informed that this report does not raise concerns that are appropriate for investigation by the ethics and compliance office, we consider this now closed". This wording, verbatim, was also the response to other, different ethics complaints by other individuals about lying by that Officer. Corporate seems to be uninterested in finding out whether their Officer is lying to the staff - in many different instances. Needless to say, this environment is devastating to engagement. At a recent training session for Department Heads from across MITRE, the contempt for the Officers that many of the participants gave voice to was alarming but not surprising. The Officers have very little credibility left and it seems they don't really know it or don't care. This is not a complaint about bad business decisions, but about an environment where Corporate Officers can lie with impunity and the ethics processes are choked off - seemingly at the top. If some of your Officers can lie to you, and others are unwilling to put themselves on the line to stop it, what should the staff do?