1) Headquarters are in Boulder, Colorado. Due to the pros listed above, this means you will likely be forced to rent at an incredibly inflated price. Your dreams of home ownership will follow roughly the same trajectory as your dreams of having a career at NEON.
2) Mismanagement at every level. The prospects for this project, even after Battelle took over, are grim. There is simply too much left to be done, with too little funding, with workers that are trying to do too much. This leads to poor quality and a poor vision for the future. While upper management is putting on a happy face, I find it incredibly unlikely that this project will be looked at as a success. In 10 years, it will be held as the shining example of how not to manage a big data project.
3) Worker morale seems to be abysmal (evidenced by the reviews on this site), as people are overworked and spread too thin. This translates to a) no time or motivation to train incoming scientists b) a low retention rate which leads to c) a loss of institutional knowledge that reinforces this cycle. I'm not even convinced my manager wants to be here. What little hope is left seems to be more geared towards a future career elsewhere rather than a belief that NEON can succeed. Before the construction deadline later this year, I fully expect a mass exodus of managers that don't want NEON as a blemish on their resume/CV when its inevitable failure becomes more public.
4) NEON likely should have been defunded many years ago. The science community should be VERY concerned about the future of this company and what it will mean for future funding of these types of large projects.
