Poor CEO Leadership and Too Many Changes - Software Engineer MITRE Employee Review

2.0
4 Jul 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

MITRE offers a tremendous amount of autonomy and flexibility to employees. Most staff have the ability to traverse projects across MITRE's many FFRDC's. This allows staff to follow growth opportunities and get away from stagnant or less-impactful projects. On the personal side, MITRE's flextime benefit is amazing and allows you to make your own workday outside of obligations that have to be met (meetings and deliverable deadlines). Benefits are excellent and pay is good, although benefits have been slowly lessened in the past several years (health insurance cuts, paid time off flexibility, etc..) COVID response and ability of company to telework are impressive. Financials are incredibly strong. If you are in agreement with leadership's politics and don't mind treading the waters of bureaucracy to make a decent living, I would recommend MITRE to others.

Cons

MITRE culture has been rapidly deteriorating with the endorsement of certain political and social viewpoints/values (but not others). Likewise, C suite level leadership is a revolving door and the CEO has done a very poor job of implementing change, communicating vision, and keeping MITRE a non-partisan, apolitical place to perform impactful work for the US Government. Our campuses (headquarters) are top notch. Some sites are not. If you are applying for a position outside of Bedford or Mclean make sure you visit in person before accepting the position. MITRE is still top-heavy with a bunch of level 5 and 6 leadership that doesn't do much of anything. Technical career advancement can be tough, and most level 4's ad 5's (mid level employees) are non-technical to the point that it becomes burdensome to Level 1, 2, and 3 staff who actually have current engineering competency. Our organizational structure is not conducive to the way we aim to support our sponsors. This may change with the current re-organization, but I doubt it with Jason Providakes in charge.

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MITRE Response
5y
At MITRE, we are proud of our mission and our employees who deliver impactful work in service of the public interest. Offering growth opportunities, flexibility and excellent benefits are part of our commitment to providing our employees with experiences to grow, thrive and prosper. Our innovative approach, technical know-how and objective insight are exemplified in our collective response as an organization to COVID-19, and also in the work that we do every day. With the support of our Board of Trustees, we recently announced changes resulting in a more seamless organization that enables greater agility, speed, and boldness while driving excellence through collaboration and innovation. These decisions are never taken lightly; they are deliberate, thought-through, and grounded in our corporate strategy. We continue to be a non-partisan organization that operates in the public interest by being innovative on multiple levels to deliver solutions to our sponsors and partners to make our world a safer place. As pioneers for a better future, we are proud to provide an environment where all of us can safely and openly discuss the current events we face in our communities and work to solve—in partnership with others—some of the biggest challenges facing our society today.

Explore other reviews about MITRE

5.0
5 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work life balance, not too competitive

Cons

Slightly lower comp compared to other for profit companies in the area

3.0
23 Jan 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great diversity, quality of life and staff. Been with MITRE over 20 years.

Cons

Too many VP,s that are not held accountable. Company recently RIF'd 24 staff from FAA FFRDC, due to dropping gov't funding...yet company has significant number of VPs all sucking off of overhead. No attempt to manage money within the "leadership" ranks. Last year company went through a major business transformation...that failed...yet, VPs held staff accountable for reporting on a subpar system that lasted over 12 months. Could not even get business data to report to gov't for over 2 months, yet, person who was in charge of the business transformation is still at MITRE. If this happened to any other MITRE employee, they would've been gone. Oddly enough the person in charge of the business transformation is the CEOs brother. Amazing how that happens. He'll probably get a bonus because of his substandard performance. MITRE recently invested in opening up an office in Australia. All on company overhead. significant large numbers of VPs travelling out to "visit"...yet company has the audacity to reduce benefits as part of cost cutting measures. Company has now taken on a "for profit" mentality. It's all about delivery... so VPS and GMs can spend, spend, spend. Board of Directors should take a good look at what is happening and make some swift changes from the CEO on down. BOD should also implement an independent IG like entity to investigate what is seeming like waste, fraud and abuse by CEO, GMs and VPs. Time for the Fat Cats to get purged!!!

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