Pros
They redid the office recently. It looks nice. Free snacks. Everyone gets their own office. WFH 2 days per week, although some folks were allowed to permanently move and/or work fully remote, which makes me think there's a bit of a double standard of who is required to come in and who isn't.
Cons
The CEOs and VPs have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders (the employees) to set the company up for success in a way that increases share price. They have not done that for the average employee. If you search for "ESOP 5500" and look at CRA's filings, you'll see the stock price has decreased since the start of the pandemic. Instead upper management touts the price since inception in 2012, but honestly no one cares about 10+ years ago. Accountability is recent performance. It's especially imperative since the ESOP is set up in such a way that employees' retirements depend on continued performance. Imagine getting most of your retirement contributions in the form of company stock that is not going up in price while the general market is getting returns of 10%/year. Yeah, it's not acceptable and there is no incentive for newer employees to stick around to feather the nests of the long-time employees. If you look at the share prices since inception, you'll see that you would have needed to be there since inception to have a higher return than the S&P 500 over the entire duration. Anyone joining in 2013 and beyond has seen a lower return than they should. They continue to use the pandemic and CRs as excuses but if you look at the filings of other companies, including other SBIR mills, you'll see others have recovered share price and are growing. The record speaks for itself. New contracts according to usaspending totaled over $30M FY24, but only $12M so far in FY25. Was led to believe they wanted to grow and had 160 employees and counting, and I came to find out they had ~190 employees at their peak, laid off a bunch of people during the pandemic, and have continued to see "voluntary" attrition (only had 140 when I was there). I was led on by the recruiter about bonuses and the amounts people get each year. Bonuses are basically structured as if you are a sales person needing to meet a quota. No meaningful bonus contribution for good execution or contributing to others' BD efforts. Execution matters. Shared credit matters as it leads to more wins. Insteady profits seem to be going to the top few at the company (see officers' compensation for contracts on usaspending.com). Was also led on about the work available during the interview vs. when I started, and was led to believe that SBIRs only accounted for 25% of revenues when they account for a lot more. Lies upon lies. If the CEO and VPs cared about company success, they would be driving multi-year company strategy - products, capital investments, IRAD, etc, rather than leaving it up to individual PIs to come up with a 1- or 2- year strategy for their individual pieces. It's just not a competitive business model. BTW, there is no IRAD. They use the SBIR program as IRAD, but if you look at usaspending.com you'll see the vast majority of new contracts each year are SBIRs or STTRs. That was never the intent of the SBIR program and the business model shows its flaws with the recent lapses in SBIR authorization. Again, the CEOs and VPs have no real strategy to wean off SBIRs and compete against other companies and startups developing AI capabilities through other funding means. My own boss and VP kept encouraging me to apply to SBIRs, saying the company was optimized for them. And then wouldn't really listen on how to win non-SBIR business but expected wins there too. Any healthy push back on processes like color teaming was interpreted as being a difficult employee who couldn't adapt to company processes. Healthy debate is imperative to drive good business decisions. Upper management needs to set egos aside and realize they are not always right. Be open to new ways of doing things. What got you the success pre-pandemic won't create success post-pandemic. Other problems I noticed: managers seem intent on "the Charles River Way". You have to prove that anything ideas brought from the outside is better, even though it's obvious their business model is flawed in this funding environment. They have a bunch of managers who've never been anywhere else in their careers and therefore are intimidated/threatened by new ideas and younger, more accomplished folks (potentially having a problem with women) who bring them. I've never seen a group of people with more fragile egos. In any event, very few new employees will be set up for success the way this company operates. Basically I think they wanted to hire a few people who could just bring some quick wins, for the purposes of boosting the retirements of those who had been there since <2012 without actually learning any lessons and without rewarding those employees. I'd go as far as to say this place is shady and the corporate officers are unethical. I've been enough places to say with certainty that this is some of the worst management I've ever seen. BTW, the benefits are not all they are cracked up to be. When you account for other companies giving certain days off, the amount of PTO is average. Having used some of the health plan, the plan covers less than you would think. And then obviously the ESOP doesn't live up to the hype.