MITRE reviews

MITRE is split into two main branches - McLean (corporate vibe) & Bedford (academic vibe), and the "sites" (the ugly stepchildren) scattered across the country. Upper management doesn't own failures. VPs and above (including the CEO) are actively adversarial to staff. CEO takes every opportunity to dodge responsibility of his role, redirecting problems to the most junior level of management that is not enabled or informed enough to solve problems. Instead of recognizing/hearing problems or solutions that junior staff are courageous enough to voice to C-suite, officers, VPs and SVPs pretend they don't exist, dismissing critical questions and sometimes openly mocking staff for asking them(CEO does this routinely at monthly meetings). CEO discourages anonymous questions, presumably because he wants to know who is challenging authority - staff do not trust corporate leadership. MITRE recently cut benefits to senior staff, including a reduction in PTO, and executed layoffs via workday. Something like 1500 staff are currently unfunded - employed but no projects/work to bill against. Corporate openly denies this to staff, but the numbers don't lie. It is implied that employees need to expend PTO when staff can't find funding, or borrow time that will need to be paid back later by working overtime (on what project!?). Staff in need of allocation are directed to turn to Departmental overhead funds, which are already depleted because staff have been unfunded for all of Q1 '23. Latest readout on internships is that over 100 interns can not be place on work projects this year. CEO responds by casting blame on staff and work-finding tools for not being able to connect to funding. If you have to look this hard for work within a company, just look for a new company - this one is not taking care of its people.

Senior leadership is abysmal, some of the weakest I have ever seen at an organization this size with this much responsibility. Very flat corporate org structure is not conducive to career growth, especially for mid-late career professionals.