Pros
* Small team structure gives opportunities to perform different roles in different projects * One of the few DoD contractors nowadays that will hire someone not already carrying a clearance * Opportunities to interface and network with various members of the DoD community (good for future job opportunities) * Exposure to different subjects makes time spent with the company more versatile on your resume, and might afford opportunities to seek additional certifications to place on your resume * Medical/Dental benefits are decent, with vision being free to employees (as of this review) * Relatively flat structure
Cons
* No 401k matching, the folks managing the 401k don't do that great of a job either, better off doing your own IRA * Almost no room for growth unless someone dies or retires * Salary growth is minimal, and they pay 20-30k less than their peers in the industry (a big reason for turnover as folks leave as soon as they get their clearance) * Very little oversight from management as they are either continuously absent/unavailable, or not concerned with matters that don't directly affect their projects or money, this results in employees frequently finding themselves without tasking or facing walls that prevent completion of tasking with no way to resolve them * Employee training is non-existent despite the company using a proprietary program they developed themselves for 90% of their work * Another issue with the lack of training is that employees will constantly find themselves working on projects for subject matter they might not know anything about (unless an employee had prior military experience, in particular navy, the chances of this are extremely high) * For programmers, the head programmer hoards all the interesting work for himself, has poor delegation skills, and complaints from programmers tend to stem from these problems (lack of work, lack of interesting work) * For analysts, the definition of whatever problem you are trying to analyze is always changing throughout a project (partly to blame on the customer base, partly to blame on project management not sticking to their guns or not actually knowing the subject matter themselves). You will rarely support any one project cradle-to-grave, will frequently have to retrain people on your project and work done thus far, and will also find yourself rejoining a project months after being pulled off, having to retrain yourself. * The nature of the projects results in a very uneven workflow with long slow periods, and extreme bursts of workload, which has resulted in morale issues among employees (fear of job loss, feeling overworked) * Extremely high turnover at this branch, highest in the company, this branch had 3x the turnover of the branch with the next highest turnover in the company in 2017 * Less than 30% of the company as a whole has been there 6 years or longer (the company has been around almost 4 decades) * 3 years vestment period for employee stock option plan, most don't make that cutoff due to turnover (or otherwise), and the value of your earned stock option gets disseminated to remaining employees * Employer sponsored events are far better, and more frequent, for the east coast divisions than the west * Big corporate is on the east coast, and provides very little oversight or interaction to their west coast branches
