Draper reviews

4.1

90% would recommend to a friend

(384 total reviews)
avatar

Jerry Wohletz

94% approve of CEO

74% positive business outlook

Draper has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 384 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Draper employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Aerospace & Defense industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

384 reviews
1.0
Feb 14, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

--2-to-1 401k matching is pretty unheard of --Unlimited sick time --Ability to accrue comp time to use at a later date --I loved the location. There are plenty of places nearby to grab a bite to eat or get a cup of coffee. And it's close to public transit.

Cons

--People coast by while doing virtually no work. Working at Draper feels like being in a "study hall" sometimes. The pay is great, but the work is completely unfulfilling. --Far too much organizational inertia. Draper spends a ton of money creating advertisements that imply that they are on the bleeding edge of technology, but in reality they are afraid of change. --Draper puts a cap on the number of employees at each level, so you have to wait your turn even if you're out-performing your peers. There are people who have been doing great work and have been there for 10+ years that are still at the level where they were hired in at. It's very hard to get a promotion. --Draper does not provide real resources to do research. They used to have an on-site library where you could order books and research papers, but they got rid of that to save money. --The culture is terrible. People get by on "security through obscurity," and upper management can't see through it.

1.0
Mar 13, 2016

Program Manager

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Draper is essentially two companies in one. The Trident program is half the lab and its own company, and all other programs are the stepchildren who fight for scraps. This non-Trident half of the lab is essentially a bunch of loosely coupled fiefdoms. This initially is great for a self-starter, as you can create your own fiefdom, and the bar is set very low for internal competition. Also, management is so focused on bureaucratic functions that as long as you pass along some beans to count you can keep them preoccupied for a while.

Cons

The reason all of these fiefdoms are allowed to exist...terrible middle and upper management. Most of these folks have been at the lab their entire career or much of it. The environment that has been created at Draper over the past 15 years should be made the subject of a case study of the Peter Principle. The majority of these managers are actually engineers and scientists who have risen to the level of their incompetence as managers, and then stagnate and remain at this level for years.

2.0
Jan 11, 2018

meh

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some very meaningful work being done at Draper.

Cons

Not a great place to work. Too many old associations, relationships, cliches and backroom politics. Largely invisible HR dept and no accountability or real people management.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 384 Reviews

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