laughable management, especially with technology - Research Scientist SAIC Employee Review

1.0
Mar 6, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. work/home balance 2. great flexibility

Cons

Where should I start? There were so many things surprised me on and on. I joined this team for a project with national biggest power grid operator 3 years ago. The project was intended to last for 3 years, but after 1 year, the project was held because we were not delivering what our customer wanted and we were burning their money like rising rocket. Let's see what happened during 3 years afterwards 1. The team could not attract any new customer 2. We lived on company's R&D money because they thought we can do "Research work" 3. I invented some models using two month time and numerous people worked on it since and could not even duplicate my work in a three years time frame. 4. We begged for some work to do for our old customer, they did give us some small jobs, but didn't pay us. We use R&D money to do works for the customer, which is called R&D activity What surprised me most are: 1. The projects were led by incompetent program managers who totally had no clue what should be done in order to accomplish a project. One of whom never wrote a line of software code in his life, but was leading the software project. So... 2. No matter how incompetent the managers were, they tried their best to have everything under their control/management. If you wanted to do something that made things much better, you were blamed 3. No matter how bad the performance of the team, the managers got all the bonus and promotions. They went to VP or senior manager. People who did the actual work got 2-3% increase annually 4. In order to enhance the management, they hired two more managers to manage the team. They are no better. But the team now sounds more structurally "competitive": 3 engineers and 4 managers. 5. The projects still go on and on without any achievement, but it is company's money and no one seems to care 6. You'd better to be quiet. If you point this to the manager, you will be considered negative. I am leaving this company, not matter what happens. I don't think any talent people would stay in such an environment if he/she wants to have his/her career future.

Explore other reviews about SAIC

5.0
Jul 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Love the contract -People are great to work with -Very flexible with times -If had a very long day, can lessen time to work less later in week

Cons

-Sometimes you gotta work a long freaking day -Have to be ready to get called to go to base at like 1 am

2.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent learning and development opportunities. Some really passionate and hard working people on your teams. Performance management is relaxed and flexible.

Cons

Benefits are wildly expensive for a company of their size. Was laid off with 1.5 months notice right before Christmas. Months prior to layoff was forced to use my PTO due to gov shutdown, but was still getting my full paycheck during shutdown. I believe this was so that they could diminish our PTO banks so they would have to pay out less when they laid us off. Laid off with zero severance despite being at company for almost 4 years and being in good standing. No efforts from management to make connections for a new internal role despite being strongly encouraged to search internally. New CEO Jim is not personable at all. Gives heavy corporate and cog in a machine vibes. Rumor has it that in the defense contracting industry, SAIC will be faring rather poorly within next 1-4 years.

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