Great place to have a job, not a good place to grow a career - Senior Member Technical Staff Draper Employee Review

3.0
17 Jan 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

This is a great place to have a job - the work environment is generally good. They have good benefits, average vacation, and are very flexible if you need to re-arrange your schedule around family needs. The work is interesting and the people are smart.

Cons

Draper is a bad place to try to grow a career. As a practice, they only promote people who have led successful projects (i.e., projects that led to follow-on revenue). There is no path to promotion for people who choose to focus on technical work or for people who agree to lead riskier projects less certain of successful follow-on funding. When they want upper level technical staff they hire from outside and do not look to advance their own people. Communication has generally been horrible between upper management and the rest of the company. However, we just got a new CEO (in Oct 2014) and hopefully that is going to change. There is very little support for software engineering - IT caters only to administrative and management functions and it is very difficult to use any current software tools, packages, etc. that are available to enable better software development.

Explore other reviews about Draper

5.0
15 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture and brilliant colleagues. Strong and relevant mission. Interesting, challenging, and diverse work. Managers are supportive and inclusive.

Cons

Company wide communication could improve at times.

5.0
13 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Interesting work, good colleagues, company is supportive and there is good work/life balance. There are leadership opportunities for those to want them. Pay is competitive.

Cons

Raises haven't kept up with inflation. It's hard to break in as a new employee. There is a lot of change, mostly for the better but a lot of change.

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