Pros
MITRE is a unique place to work in that it is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). As an FFRDC, it is a private not-for-profit corporation chartered in the public interest. (Actually, MITRE operates three FFRDCs; one for DoD, one for the FAA, and one for the Department of the Treasury). The MITRE Corporation’s assets are owned by the federal government but the employees are not considered government employees (i.e., they not civil servants). There is both a bad side and a good side to this in that the employees do not have any job protections or automatic pay or step increases afforded civil servants, but, at the same time, they do not have the same constraints in promotions or merit pay increases. A highly capable junior employee can move up the latter relatively quickly (as compared to the federal government employees). Also, generally, the work is interesting, varied and can have significant impact on how the government designs, develops, and implements systems. The work environment is intellectually stimulating and the technical staff is typically of a higher caliber than most commercial organizations (most tech staff have advanced degrees). The management supports intellectual integrity, high quality products, and encourages healthy debate in developing technical approaches to problem solving. As an FFRDC, MITRE is not permitted to perform commercial work nor is it allowed to bid on contracts in the government sector. Because of this, the staff is free from conflict of interest and can provide honest objective recommendations to its government sponsors. In a sense, the research environment at MITRE is much like a university although, at MITRE, the research work is direct by the government sponsoring organizations.
Cons
As an FFRDC, the total number staff and the total dollar revenue than can be applied to the sponsor organizations is capped by Congress (this is true of all FFRDCs). This cap (or ceiling as it is known within MITRE) is rarely increased and when it is, it is usually by a small amount. In fact, in the mid 1990s, the ceiling was decreased in line with the declining DoD budgets which resulted in limited reductions in force (layoffs). The down side to the congressionally mandated ceiling is that there are limited growth opportunities for the organization which can also limit individual promotion opportunities (as compared to a fast growing private/commercial company). Merit pay increases for senior staff are also fairly limited (around 2-3%) because junior staff must be given somewhat higher merit increases as they are rapidly increasing their earning potential in the marketplace. The upside of the staff number caps is that the government sponsoring organizations (MITRE’s “customers”) generally want more MITRE support than they allowed to have, so the total amount of work remains the same from one year to the next resulting in a reasonably stable work program (no big ramp ups or ramp downs in work force). Another limitation of the FFRDC environment is that, as a non-profit, there are no stock options, profit sharing, or cash bonuses based on the organizations financial performance. In fact, because of the staff ceiling mentioned above, bringing in new work, which is highly valued in most commercial organizations, may result in negative consequences for a MITRE person. This is because if a government organization requests additional support in area MITRE may be uniquely qualified to perform, and a MITRE staff member tells the customer that MITRE is willing to perform such work, MITRE may have to go back to the customer and decline the work due to the ceiling issue. This can cause frustration with both the government customers and the MITRE staff that work with them. This also eliminates a key metric used to evaluate (senior) staff in most commercial organizations: positive (or negative) impact on the organizations financial performance.