Pros
Company has a lot of talented and smart people. There are leaders who are caring and provide insightful guidance. Benefits are good, if you’re in Richmond/Mclean the campus benefits are nice.
Cons
The performance reviews 2x a year have shaped people in a different way. It’s a bell curve so 80-90% of you & peers are in the strong category. A % falls to the bottom and are pushed out. Always compared against peers and need to be seem “trying very hard and caring”. This is not am environment where you can put your head down to work and get things done. There’s way too much work to be done and burnout is pretty rampant. Those who don’t face burnout are ones who have been here 10, 15, 20+ years out of college because this is all they know. Having been in a few institutions I see the differences of the newer people vs long tenured peoples. Newer people stay for a few years and leave or long tenured people just stay forever. Mind you the stack performance reviews started a few years ago. There’s some political culture that can be missed if you’re separated from your team. Everyone is predominantly together, but I have seen teams where 1-2 members are in NY/Long Island/Chicago but the rest of the team and the people you interact with is in Richmond/Mclean. You end up missing a lot of side chatter, for better or worse. There’s a cult like feel here. Either jump on board or get pushed out. There’s really no between. Reading through reviews it’s clear the culture has changed over the past few years. Unfortunately for me, this is all I know. There were weird things I’ve observed but ignored them. Over a short time of 2.5 years here, it’s become more obvious for how it really is. There’s a lot of turnover, but you never know because you don’t interact with the many other teams. I see reorgs happen every 6 months and it’s just “accepted” as I see people be pushed out, layered, and set up for promotions.