3 Concerns Regarding Not For Profit Contractor
Pros
MITRE is a profitable (although not for taxable profit) federal-funded non-compete contractor for Federal agencies with pre-allocated funding. Business operation excess are re-invested and distributed as bonus if you are part of the organization who receive significant end-of-year distribution. Company accounting information is private and closely managed. MITRE is a comfortable working environment once you know what is the real kool-Aid and where revenue stream are from. Resource is aplenty here.
Cons
First there are a lot of old non-technical managers fighting hard to maximize their salary and end-of-year bonus; decisions are made purely based on operation expenses and profit. Many titles of MITRE employees are made up and does not describe the person's background, education, nor experiences. Some have non-U.S. graduate degrees and many have non-technical give-away master degrees for "hard-working" professionals. Second, the managers are not able to understand technical issues due to their lack of formal scientific education, while smart technical people are pushed/managed down to keep their technical advice to align with non-technical managers. Third, my fellow employees are largely what we expected from older federal agencies, we are not comfortable with non-traditional minority groups. With change of the world, MITRE really needs to start work hard to keep up with the evolving new technical ecosystem.
