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
2.0
Jul 8, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Draper has/had many great technology advanced projects and if you were fortunate, you had the opportunity to work with some great people and projects. The benefits were good.

Cons

In the past recent years, with the change of new management, the company took a turn for the worse and upper management ruled with a draconian attitude. My Manager was disrespectful, condescending , created a hostile/toxic environment and displayed Implicit Bias attitudes towards me and several other minority employees. Even some of my non minority employees were telling me that the manager's actions were characterized to one who is Implicitly Bias. Many complaints were made to Human Resources and Legal and to my knowledge, no actions were taken against that Manager. I was once told by one of my manager, "You have everything to make it in this company except for one thing". I went down the list of what that possibly might be and every-time was told "no that's not it" . The only words i did not say, is my skin color and the implicit bias attitude of upper management at Draper, at the time.

1.0
May 10, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

40 hour weeks--very few people work more than 8 hours/day. The pay is pretty good--as I was job hunting trying to get out, I kept hearing that companies couldn't meet my salary requirements, and I was only asking for what I was currently making!

Cons

Favoritism and cronyism were rampant while I was there. They don't like outsiders. They seem to prefer people who enter the lab fresh out of grad school and stay there for their entire career over people who join mid-career, as I did. Ironically, they lose those young people due to the culture of insularity. People at all levels join and all excited about new opportunities, but they can't get an in to those opportunities and leave. I have also never seen such petty undermining and backstabbing on the way up the corporate ladder.

2.0
May 16, 2017

Stay away hardware engineers.

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very interesting work, more so than industry. Reputation is everything. Once you establish a good reputation work will find you ( because management isn't responsible for finding you work) and you will be given allot of creative freedom. Since you find your own work you tend to work with people you like. People are friendly and helpful.

Cons

Terrible location, horrendous traffic. Having to find your own project work. Most dysfunctional company I ever worked for. Cramped work environment. Being friendly and personable is valued more than competence. Can be very slow at times. New CEO has made some long overdue changes but he is destroying Draper Culture and work environment. Existing management too spineless to say anything ( classic case of Peter Principal). If you really want to work at a lab in the Boston are, try Lincoln instead.

Viewing 19 - 21 of 384 Reviews

Glassdoor has 515 Draper reviews submitted anonymously by Draper employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Draper is right for you.