Pros
- Awesome scenery at the Deer Creek Facility. - Gave me the opportunity to learn AWS cloud technology. - Many employees that have worked for LM say that when contracts are terminated, managers were always able to find them new positions in the company. - LM employees get free access to Safari books online. - The Deer Creek Facility has a decent gym, with free weights, bench press, 4 treadmills, .... Also has a racquetball court. - Some programs offer ability to travel overseas (but is not the norm)
Cons
- Big company does not mean stability. For example, I was hired in 2015, but program was decided to be moved to MD in 2016, so the entire team was threatened to be laid off. There were about 60 of us. Now, about 20. And the deadline is end of fiscal year. - Management is the typical political scenario. They say they care about their employees, but actually don't, or perhaps don't know how to. For example, Management had no plan on moving employees to new positions before announcing end of program. - Very slow hiring process. There's an internal job board, but the process is so slow that response from inquiries take months. - Got food poisoning from the cafeteria and found several other people also threw up. - A lot of bureaucracy to get software installed on your workstation. For example, took 3 weeks to install Notepad++. - Possibility of losing your clearance. For example, if you have a TS/SCI clearance, but the project's customer requires a Polygraph, LM will not read you on for your SCI, so you will lose your SCI clearance if you wait for your Poly adjudication for more than 2 years, which is highly likely. Some employees' clearance was completely removed due to LM security ineptitude. - Performance evaluation process takes a lot of time/effort out of your day. A lot of bureaucracy again. - Weird Paid Time Off (PTO) plan. 2 weeks of vacation + supplemental 1 week vacation + undetermined personal time off that you can take unlimited amount because there's no written rule, but is generally frowned upon if you take more than a week. You can carry over only 2 weeks vacation to the next year, but can only accrue up to 400 hours. - Pay is on the low side. They claim benefits and stability, but that's probably not true. Medical/dental/vision for employee+spouse+children is about $560/month for premiums. Not too high compared to other small companies, but since small companies will pay you more than $1,000/month more than your cost of benefits, the LM pay seems a bit low. If your level of performance is high, you get 1% pay raise. - Expectations are higher than your pay grade. For example, management expected a Level 5 engineer to attend symposiums, write patents, publish journals, but his pay was on the level of a senior programmer and he was not given funding to attend symposiums. - Numerous compliance training requirements.
