Internal tasking is in a perpetual state of upheaval. Irregularities in funding, some of which are caused by bureaucracy and government shutdowns, shutter projects and leave employees scrambling to find work. All working time must be charged to specific accounts (indicated by charge codes), and when codes are exhausted or become unavailable, dozens or hundreds of employees across the company are often plunged into a search for tasking all at once.
Upon first being hired, I was told, as a half-joke, "Welcome to MITRE, now get a job."
Furthermore, projects run with so little fat that overruns or setbacks cause considerable consternation between project leads, accounting staff, and funding sources. And it's rare for employees to have all their time allocated to a single project, but few project leads are able to adjust to their mental model that a worker allocated 50% to a single project is only working 20 hours on it in a week, not 40. As such, many people are overworked.
But despite this overwork, and the earnest and high-quality effort that most employees are well able to put out, the executive leadership team (ELT), as they like to call themselves, raises as a point of issue at most all-hands meetings that MITRE "costs too much money" for our sponsors' likings.
This is a perturbing fact when the rates that individual employees cost is roughly on par with other federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), and far lower than industry or for-profit contractors. Knowing that the CEO makes the better part of $3 million per year, and several other vice presidents (of which there are many) make seven figures as well, once their bonuses are accounted for.
Meanwhile, a return-to-office (RTO) program is currently underway that has, on peak days, filled so many of the offices in the McLean campus that many employees are left out in common areas with no privacy in which to answer their Microsoft Teams calls whose other participants are working at other campuses, or at sponsor sites. Indeed, many MITRE employees' tasking in a single day may involve working alone with their laptop and answering a phone call or two.
Couple this to the fact that, prior to RTO, the vast majority of the trash and recycling receptacles kept in hallways or inside offices were eliminated as a cost-saving measure. Now, on the busiest days, the trash cans across the McLean campus are frequently full just past the lunch hour, and begin to rot and stink by the end of the day.
Welcome to MITRE, now find a place to work.
Before in the months before trashcangate, there were palpable rollbacks in benefits. Longtime (9+ year) employees actually had their PTO accrual rate and caps lowered. In this change, MITRE has openly scorned anyone seeking to stay with them for a whole career.
And they have done so again today. At the tail end of an all-hands meeting, our CEO spoke extemporaneously after a panel of ELT members answered a series of cherry-picked softball questions during an advance-planned Q&A segment. He told us, all of the workers at his company, "you're not here to make the big bucks."
Welcome to MITRE, now go find another job. You are not valued here.
