Mathematica reviews

The company faces many problems, most of them exacerbated by its own leadership. +++ 1) Changing federal landscape. The new administration has already cancelled around 25-30% of backlog forcing the company to layoff staff. Back in January, the CEO said he was not worried about the admin change even as employees expressed their concerns. Then the contract cancellations came rolling in and there was no plan. Layoffs and furloughs were announced, but criteria were intentionally kept vague and supervisors were not involved at all leading to many rumours and disgruntled employees. +++ 2) Changing model. The policy research and evaluation firm is now trying to transform into an agile data tech consultancy. This is major shift away from the knowledge base within the company. This leads to tension and uncertainty among staff as internal training is minimal and new "tech" positions are mostly staffed with external hires. Lots ($20m?) has been invested into a "secure" data platform but that has not paid off at all. Employees and (potential) clients struggle to see it's value. +++ 3) Failing executive leadership. The CEO has been in that position for 30 years - and it shows. He's the opposite of what the company is trying to be - agile and modern. He recently received a vote of no confidence from his employees by not being reelected onto the board (it's an employee owned company) but did not understand the message. Generally, all of leadership is completely out of touch with its employees (their "base" salary is also 14-20x that of an associate) and they misunderstand or chose to ignore staff concerns. The board is in the CEO's pocket and fails to properly execute it's oversight tasks. They approve private sector bonuses ($600k) which do not align with the company's social mission and stated values which attracted most employee-owners in the first place. +++4) Overhead costs. The company is relatively expensive. To lower overhead costs junior staff is constantly pressured to not charge their time to overhead and professional development. To make this happen, you need to work more than 40 hrs a week - so that you can charge at least 85-90% of a 40 hour week to billable projects. Meanwhile, compensation and headcounts for management and E level positions keep going up. Leading to more pressure to be billable. +++ 5) Renounced "core" value. DEI was once one of the organization's core values. Apparently you can drop a "core" value - something of which the importance to the company and culture was emphasized more often that you'd want - overnight. How quickly and easily leadership dropped this value to appease the new admin showed their true character. The bottom line is what matters - everything else should help drive profits. If we can't market DEI, we drop it. +++ 6) Staff dissatisfaction. All of the above had lead to major distrust among staff. There are several "groups" of employees who actively undermine the executive team's authority and question it's leadership and direction. All of these operate anonymously as those who openly challenge leadership are silenced and subsequently fired.

I noticed something strange going on at Mathematica of the last few years. Executive leadership really blundered on opportunities to be transparent and actually listen to the feedback of its employees (it is employee owned after all, but they seem to have forgotten that). I think the company is desperate for new leadership, in need of leaders that actually inspire and lead by example with empathy toward others. Echoing one of the comments below, after leadership dropped the ball on communications regarding new rules for our billable targets, there was a leak of some execs’ bonuses on their internal social media site. Their response was to fire the individuals involved, even those involved by accident—they then held an all staff meeting where the incident was completely ignored and they talked about “love” and “magic” as if that was supposed to fix things. Everyone else’s bonuses and salaries (those not in the c suite) are easily accessible in the company because of how we were staffed and budgeted, so what are they hiding? Maybe they’re embarrassed because they are so self focused and entitled. The CEO is pretty invisible so one might question how warranted his bonus/salary really is. But hey, they are all buddies and they make the rules, so as long as the stock price is going up (aka their retirement packages), who cares about the lack of investment in the rest of the employees. Many key people have been leaving left and right, many because of lack of promotions and professional development due to the backup of execs coasting into retirement. It also doesn’t really matter how much new work you can bring to the company or time you spend managing difficult clients or the time you spend on proposals, you’re just seen as unbillable. I left because I didn’t see a path forward and got a better offer elsewhere. Maybe I’ll come back some day but not with their current leadership.