Pros
You get to work on interesting projects for groups like DARPA. There is a dock in Rhode Island for testing drones
Cons
No real products. Profit comes from the SBIR program. The program was almost shut down this year. There was no real communicated strategy for dealing with the main source of funding of the company going away. When teams win proposals everyone above you gets a cut for their paycheck so it is sort of a pyramid. People who profit from the company structure have been with the company for 20+ years, so you’re essentially working for their retirement account. Your effort becomes their vested share price. You’re expected to write proposals while your boss gets the credit as PI. So you do all the internal work, reports, managing, scheduling, final reports and demos, and your boss gets the external credit for their CV. Turnover is a big problem since they mandated a 3 day in the office 2 day at home hybrid schedule. Employees were not engaged in the process at all. We’ve lost whole capabilities like NLP and cybersecurity.
