Pros
- Great work-life balance! If you work in a classified environment, your work stays at work and keeping work separate from home is easy. Also PTO is use-it-or-lose-it which is great in my opinion, and I've never had trouble scheduling it/getting it approved. Flexible schedules and part time work can easily be done as well. - Probably only worked 1 or 2 weekend days in 6 years of being there. - Mostly a laid-back work environment, but depends on the program. - Social events bring people together. - Pretty easy to make friends and coworkers that actually care about you. - Slow work pace, which could be a con for some. There's a lot of red tape in processes. - Plenty of opportunities within the company for many different jobs that include travel to site and even some remote work.
Cons
- Many unnecessary layers of management/organization. - Company will never pay software engineers at industry-standard software engineer rates; they will only ever pay you what their competition (other defense companies) pays their employees, which is low in comparison. - Overall individualistic work qualities are not rewarded. Promotions and raises seem completely random as if chosen out of a hat at times. Personally, my relationships and experiences with my managers has been really good and my good work felt noticed by them and feedback was good, but that didn't seem to play a role in the compensation advancement process overall due to the complicated multi-layered management scheme. - Lots of red process tape (as mentioned in part of a pro is a laid back work pace).