Good Mission, Poor CEO - Lead Cyber Security Engineer MITRE Employee Review

2.0
29 Jan 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Local management is supportive and transparent. Mission to serve the public interest. Good work/life balance

Cons

The CEO and senior VPs are disconnected from reality. They make decisions that have not been thought through, including budget cuts and benefits changes. While the individual issues are troubling enough, there is a clear tend of poorly thought out decisions. Some of the financial pressures MITRE faces aren't unique (e.g., inflation), but issues are exacerbated by terribly planning by executive management. The CEO has regular (roughly monthly) All Hands events. He only leaves a small amount of time for questions and has zero follow-up on pressing questions that are upvoted by employees. He seems to get incredibly defensive when his decisions are questioned and becomes dismissive and condescending. As one example among many, during the All Hands after the benefits cuts were announced we were told our benefits remain competitive with peer companies. When asked for data to support that claim he told the entire company to check out Glassdoor, that we would see our benefits are great. As a company full of engineers whose job is to provide data driven recommendations and "show our work" that response is belittling and flies in the face of everything the rank and file employees are expected to do. The C-Suite is also incapable of delivering bad news truthfully. When they cut benefits they announced it would have a "neutral or positive impact on 65% of employees" (due to moving one holiday to a flex day). A simple "we know these changes are bad but we had to balance the books, sorry" would have gone a long way to improving morale, but that sentiment was totally absent from any communications. If feels like every single announcement tries to gaslight employees into thinking that management is doing us a favor. Why they can't treat us like adults is beyond me, but it's a continuing theme and I'm sick of it. After working at MITRE for almost 10 years I no longer recommend it as a good place to work.

Explore other reviews about MITRE

5.0
28 May 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Supportive leadership Interesting work Work/life balance

Cons

Searching for projects at times Funding challenges

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!!!

276
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All