Mission and Brand Drives Engagement
Pros
All employees are focused on advancing humankind and being part of a great brand. This makes it easy to win the best place to work in federal government awards year after year. When you say I work for NASA there's more ooo's and ahhhh's vs if you say I work at (insert any other federal agency) where you get ewww's. NASA cares deeply about it's people and they employee a great team to continually look at how to make managers and leaders great from a base human level (so less about the tips and tricks to influence people, and more about how to build deep and trusting relationships). Pay is higher than most GS pay scales
Cons
Kingdom builders: Organizations like to feed egos and try to keep funding or cool projects to themselves vs trying to find ways to work across centers or organizations to make the most of tax payer dollars and great NASA teammate minds. Engineers are held to power point: The techincal folks usually spend more time behind computer screens finalizing PowerPoints vs being together, solving problems live, seeing things/hardware/processes/procedures in person to maximize impact. Advancement: It's government, some people retire in place (regardless of age or tenure) and up and coming talent that are looking for growth and to make an impact will leave. Some of this could be part of design, some of it is just having less emphasis on merit based reward systems that help advance/elevate those making the best contribution.
