MITRE has been drifting downhill for many years. As the organization has grown it has drifted farther away from the basic mission of an FFRDC. The FFRDC motto of "we tell the government what it needs to hear, not what it wants to hear" has been morphed into "keep the money coming in". People who are self-promoting and say what their management wants to hear are promoted. The management doesn't know how to lead - continued surveys and processes to "incentivize" senior staff are misguided at best. Many senior staff want to coast to retirement out of a sense of futility with MITRE or on the other side of the spectrum - laziness. There is NO ONE to go to in management. My experience has been that Level 7 management is out to protect their turf and their jobs and in many cases to do as little as possible while the Officers are all trying to jockey for position and advancement. Senior staff who have approached them with true concern about the work program, ways MITRE can address significant Government program challenges, or incompetent and lazy superiors have gotten the standard response: fake concern, promises to address the issues, maybe a personal meeting with an Officer, and back to business as usual. The latest attempts at salary manipulation miss the point - the best people are motivated to do the job, yet they are told that they must "prove themselves" to fight for scraps from the table. This further alienates them from the organization. If only we could determine what the "goals" are beyond silly phrases like "the next moonshot". Add to this the notion of “co-Department Heads” which was an attempt to streamline management without reducing the number of managers? That one can’t even pass the laugh test. The Officers, particularly The CEO, should note that when you don't hear from senior people who have been vocal in the past about the good of the organization and the work we do it could be an indication that they have given up and see no purpose in risking the wrath of their superiors for the same old response of inaction.
