Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory reviews

- AOS has no trust, transparency, or accountability. Decisions are made that affect staff (COVID protocols, return to work, etc) while most of the staff are against the mgmt decisions. People who don't do their job never are held accountable and they expect top performers to pick up the slack. Staff are left feeling like their voices aren't considered and are constantly being treated like children. You have to report everyday if you're working at home or in the lab, check badge swipes, force you on some projects to work at the lab to charge the budget. It's humiliating and makes top performers feel like they can't be trusted to do their job like adults. During the sector all hands meetings, the sector head had the meetings turn off anonymous questions so people couldn't ask their questions openly without getting reprimanded. - Senior management doesn't care they are losing people, they just want to keep hiring and the quality of new hires is going down, while all top performers are leaving. Staff feel like they are surrounded by toxic polices and people. Top performers realize they can have better work like balance and start looking for jobs outside of the lab and once they start looking, they realize they get paid much more. - The pay is terrible for senior technical staff. They pay a bunch of "thought leaders" retirees from previous government and military jobs instead of investing in their technical food. The mid year raises are very small compared to other companies and after a few years of working at the lab you stop getting them. They are mainly for new hires. - It's a non-profit but it's run just like any other business in AOS where they just try to get more money from the government regardless of the project description. They try to push out quantity versus quality work which leaves people stretched way to thin. - The work is continuing to become focused around mic rosoft office products ( writing long proposals in word that do t get funded, briefs in PowerPoint that get reviewed 100x and dry run 20x, tracking budgets so the people on the task stick to their allocation). It's a management nightmare. Technical work at APL is mainly systems engineering which means staff are not developing diverse transferable skills that will help them later in life. You basically get stuck doing the same thing until you become a manager and can't leave. Software related projects tend to focus on some old technology because sponsors can't get the latest approved on their environment so young technical staff feel like they're never keeping up with the industry. - As a manager you have only a couple hours a week to manage your staff which is not billable to the projects you work on, so any extra time not covered on overhead that you spend developing your staff means you're donating that time. - You get a clearance and a lot of people barely ever use it. The projects that would enable you to use it often leaves you locked in a closet again working on some old system or project that may never actually be used by the government or military. - The contracts in AOS are too sorry 6 months - 1 yr usually, so staff are feeling like they're always chasing down a new project just to make sure their time is covered and yes that responsibility is mostly on them to find their projects. Program managers in AOS just aren't doing their job bringing in be work . They blame the staff for not creating enough new proposals and briefs which should be their job. - Too often you are considered the "resident expert" after googling a topic for a couple weeks . Staff are left feeling like they actually can't be students, which is mainly due to the fleeting number of senior technical staff and the fact that AOS doesn't invest in growing them technically. They would rather force them down management paths. - Even the computers you're given aren't the latest, which is a problem because refreshes happen ever 4 years now. - There are so many passive aggressive people who gossip in AOS. It feels like highschool drama. - They new private discussion behind mgmt are talks of looking for new jobs. - when you do get a new promotion, you often can't leave your other roles so you are stuck wearing multiple hats (project manager of multiple projects, section supervisor, chief ...) so staff again feel like they have too much on their plate. also when you get a new promotion, it didn't come with a better salary. & is it even salary?! you HAVE to have all your hours billed to a budget. no project to bill? you have to use overhead. no overhead? it's coming out of PTO or you're basically donating time.

After working for some years at APL, your salary will no longer be competitive with other organizations (can easily get a 40-50% pay increase by switching jobs). Also, many projects feel pointless and lack any impact, especially IRADs. Lastly and most importantly, upper management is absolutely clueless when it comes to remote work. Many groups are being forced to show up 3+ days a week to the Lab, and any feedback that was gathered during the pandemic about preference to work remotely seems to be completely disregarded. Remote work was going great during the peak of the pandemic, and employees were incredibly productive. Now employees have to be in the office just to have Zoom meetings while trying not to be interrupted by other employees having Zoom meetings... The most infuriating part is that on-site presence is being tracked via badge swipes. Are we not professional adults that can be trusted? It's frankly insulting and immediately triggered my job search.