Where to being...
1) MITRE is excellent at "admiring" the problem rather than solving it. It's amazing how often and quickly people there want to set up a perfect text-book problem to solve. Then they find that they can't, due to lack of data or something similar and basically give up and make a recommendation that the government try to collect said data.
2) The corporate culture is terrible. I felt constantly belittled and put down by my colleagues. I think that stems from not being a systems engineer. YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED HERE IF YOU'RE NOT A SYSTEMS ENGINEER. But, as a previous government civilian in a highly strategic environment, I felt that I was fundamentally demoted. Policy and campaign planning down to systems engineering is a step backwards, and I should've been smarter to see that. I don't think I did anything in my five plus years there that is meaningful.
3) The company micromanages you. I was TIRED of trying to build good work for myself, only to find little to no high level support for my endeavors. I was tired of things like Clarity (our resource allocation tool), "resource managers" failing to help people find coverage, useless meetings, project pages, and monthly reports.
4) I'm appalled (still) at the fact the company has no classified infrastructure. Not really. And, there's corporate pushback against going "native," that is, embedding yourself with government sponsors. So... how is this company relevant without classified systems?
5) MITRE is trying to branch out into other things... state governments, professional societies, etc. This on top of being the owner of FFRDCs for several agencies (FAA, DOD, DHS, DOJ, etc...). The cross-pollination is messy, to say the least. It dilutes expertise.
6) Those statements of work-life balance being good are blatantly false! I took my laptop on more vacations, more nights and weekends than at any other point in my career. All the work-development stuff, to include R&D proposals (it's an ffRDc, after all) are all on your own time.
