Still a pretty good place to work - Principal Optical Engineer Sandia National Laboratories Employee Review

Good benefits, good salary and reasonable work load

Things can move slower then desired

4x10 schedule including 1 day remote. Generous and encouraging culture for career development, they reimburse almost all the professional certification fees and training costs. Livermore campus is at the border of bay area.

The Facilities Management organization at Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore) has become one of the most frustrating and poorly managed workplaces I’ve experienced. The department seems to go through constant reorganizations with no clear long-term vision or strategy. Leadership appears to be trying to rebuild an engineering organization that was largely dismantled years ago, yet there is little evidence of a realistic plan to make it successful. Instead of creating a balanced organization, management continues hiring engineers while expecting them to absorb responsibilities that should be shared across multiple groups. Meanwhile, many senior staff in supporting organizations contribute little beyond meetings, presentations, and PowerPoint slides. Some have spent years in management without meaningful facilities operations or maintenance experience, making many of their decisions feel disconnected from reality. The engineering workforce receives very little mentorship or professional development. Newer employees are often thrown into complex assignments with minimal guidance, leaving them to learn through trial and error. Rather than developing technical talent, the organization creates an environment where engineers are expected to solve every problem while receiving little support or recognition. Morale is extremely low. Many of the engineers actually responsible for keeping facilities running are actively looking for opportunities to transfer to program organizations or leave the laboratory altogether. The workload continues to increase while staffing, resources, and management support fail to keep pace. Perhaps the most out-of-touch aspect is leadership’s vision of managing the facilities with a “Disneyland” mindset. In practice, the organization often feels less like a world-class national laboratory and more like a circus—where appearance takes priority over sound engineering, bureaucracy outweighs technical expertise, and unrealistic expectations are placed on the people doing the actual work. Sandia has many talented engineers and dedicated employees, but the current management approach within Facilities Management undermines their efforts. Without stronger technical leadership, meaningful mentorship, realistic workload expectations, and a clear organizational direction, it will remain difficult to attract, retain, and motivate the engineers needed to support such a critical mission. Benefits and employee perks are underwhelming. Management often cites taxpayer funding as the reason for offering very few on-campus amenities, yet it’s frustrating to see contracts and purchases that appear to cost several times more than comparable work outside the lab under the justification of “supporting small businesses.” The inconsistency is hard to ignore. Cost-cutting frequently seems to come at employees’ expense. Bottled water was removed to encourage everyone to drink tap water, only to be restored after widespread employee complaints reached senior leadership in New Mexico. Compensation is equally disappointing. Annual raises are typically around 2% at best, regardless of performance. The bonus system has also shifted from a more broadly shared model to one with greater management discretion, creating the perception that favoritism and office politics carry more weight than actual performance. Overall, the compensation and recognition system does little to reward or retain strong engineers.