Good Mission, Poor CEO - Recensione dipendente - Lead Cyber Security Engineer presso MITRE

The CEO and senior VPs are disconnected from reality. They make decisions that have not been thought through, including budget cuts and benefits changes. While the individual issues are troubling enough, there is a clear tend of poorly thought out decisions. Some of the financial pressures MITRE faces aren't unique (e.g., inflation), but issues are exacerbated by terribly planning by executive management. The CEO has regular (roughly monthly) All Hands events. He only leaves a small amount of time for questions and has zero follow-up on pressing questions that are upvoted by employees. He seems to get incredibly defensive when his decisions are questioned and becomes dismissive and condescending. As one example among many, during the All Hands after the benefits cuts were announced we were told our benefits remain competitive with peer companies. When asked for data to support that claim he told the entire company to check out Glassdoor, that we would see our benefits are great. As a company full of engineers whose job is to provide data driven recommendations and "show our work" that response is belittling and flies in the face of everything the rank and file employees are expected to do. The C-Suite is also incapable of delivering bad news truthfully. When they cut benefits they announced it would have a "neutral or positive impact on 65% of employees" (due to moving one holiday to a flex day). A simple "we know these changes are bad but we had to balance the books, sorry" would have gone a long way to improving morale, but that sentiment was totally absent from any communications. If feels like every single announcement tries to gaslight employees into thinking that management is doing us a favor. Why they can't treat us like adults is beyond me, but it's a continuing theme and I'm sick of it. After working at MITRE for almost 10 years I no longer recommend it as a good place to work.