MITRE reviews

Other than the logistical positives above... MITRE is disappointing. They are charged with tackling some of our nation’s most critical problems. Being an FFRDC, MITRE should be the "sweet spot" between Government and Contractor, but MITRE is failing to be the partner it should be to its Government sponsors. From coast to coast, from nearly all Government agencies, MITRE has developed a very poor stigma. There's a common theme that our sponsors (customers) tend to roll their eyes the first time they learn MITRE has been assigned to their project. This is a result of MITRE underperforming on projects for years. They underperform because they assign under qualified people. This doesn't mean these people are poor performers, and most of the time it’s no fault of their own because they are sometimes placed on projects if they need a charge-code rather than having a skillset the project actually needs. For example, a radio frequency engineer might be assigned to a project needing software developers. This is not seen as a problem to management, because "the RF engineer is highly intelligent and should be able to pick up the skillset required." However, we all know experience is critical. There's a push to hire hundreds of people this year. When asked what projects require so many people, management acknowledges there might be none and work will be found after the employees are hired. To me, this is completely unacceptable. It shows that MITRE is only concerned with consuming Government STE (for those who don’t know, STE is a unit of funding that the Government awards MITRE to pay for employees.) This is especially concerning for two reasons... MITRE is funded by tax payer dollars and because some of the projects they work are directly related to National Security.