FFRDCs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

Resign.

Which would accomplish ???

Mark had nothing to do with how MITRE got to this point.

A totally unrealistic but... clawing back Jason's bonuses would at least have some relationship to how MITRE got here.

Agree

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

What is Engenuity?

MITRE Engenuity is/was a not-for-profit that MITRE set up to monetize MITRE IP. E.g. Engenuity provided classes based on MITRE's cyber ATT&CK framework.

The problem with Engenuity is, of course, how are any MITRE FFRDC recommendations clearly independent of any attempts to monetization MITRE IP? It's a needle that can't be threaded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

What is Engenuity?

MITRE Engenuity is/was a not-for-profit that MITRE set up to monetize MITRE IP. E.g. Engenuity provided classes based on MITRE's cyber ATT&CK framework.

The problem with Engenuity is, of course, how are any MITRE FFRDC recommendations clearly independent of any attempts to monetization MITRE IP? It's a needle that can't be threaded.

Mitre should have setup a school to monetize their staff with education programming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

What is Engenuity?

MITRE Engenuity is/was a not-for-profit that MITRE set up to monetize MITRE IP. E.g. Engenuity provided classes based on MITRE's cyber ATT&CK framework.

The problem with Engenuity is, of course, how are any MITRE FFRDC recommendations clearly independent of any attempts to monetization MITRE IP? It's a needle that can't be threaded.

Mitre should have setup a school to monetize their staff with education programming.

https://www.rand.edu/programs.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

Resign.

Which would accomplish ???

Mark had nothing to do with how MITRE got to this point.

A totally unrealistic but... clawing back Jason's bonuses would at least have some relationship to how MITRE got here.

Agree

All CEOs need to lead boldly and must stop appearing like sheepish technocrats overseeing the liquidation of their organizations. If they are over their heads, they should step aside. At that level, simply throwing people into the RIF fire, blaming the previous guy and hoping for the best is frankly sad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The recently departed Mitre CEO wanted to grow the company with non-FFRDC work, one guesses this was so he could justify a pay raise for himself. And the FFRDC work at Mitre was expanding at the same time he was doing this.

Jason took the FFRDC's for granted, which is why Mark was brought in.

Respectfully, brought in to do what? Reactive RIFs with the CFO, CEO & new VP of Ops? Anyone can do that

It seems like he was brought in to RIF people.

Agreed. In all orgs RIFs are easy to implement and bring immediate financial relief (CFOs love them). It's a quick fix where everyone (except the well-connected) is expendable.

Mark started Labor Day - several months before the election. If the Dems had won, modulo getting rid of the idiocy that was Engenuity, it's unlikely that any/most of the RIFs would have happened.

As far as quick fix, as an operator of FFRDCs, MITRE's staffing levels are nearly entirely dependent on Federal decisions to rely on FFRDC staff for whatever. As of November, MITRE's staffing levels matched MITRE work under the Biden Administration. The Trump Administration/DOGE/Palantir buddies/3025/... decided to trash a number of Federal IT programs with knock-on effects on MITRE work and, in some cases, explicitly targeted FFRDC funding. Result was a large number of MITRE staff with no work/no likelihood of new work in any financially absorbable timeframe. Other than RIFs as a tool to match staff to work, what precisely do you think Mark/CFO/... could have done?

Resign.

Which would accomplish ???

Mark had nothing to do with how MITRE got to this point.

A totally unrealistic but... clawing back Jason's bonuses would at least have some relationship to how MITRE got here.

Agree

All CEOs need to lead boldly and must stop appearing like sheepish technocrats overseeing the liquidation of their organizations. If they are over their heads, they should step aside. At that level, simply throwing people into the RIF fire, blaming the previous guy and hoping for the best is frankly sad

The previous guy couldn’t tell an FFRDC from commercial contractors. He created a mess. The new guy isn’t blaming his predecessor, but everyone can see he was left with the fallout.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

Add in IPR...probably about 600 total employees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

Add in IPR...probably about 600 total employees.

And a lot of the execs are functionals, like HR. It’s not a fair analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

Add in IPR...probably about 600 total employees.

And a lot of the execs are functionals, like HR. It’s not a fair analysis.

Yeah, I doubt that general counsel has a lot of people working for him.

Anyway, eight execs in the FFRDC. Looks like a head guy and seven “division” or “program” leads under him. 450/7 = 64, which is reasonable. The “data science division” seems a bit out of place among those others, but I guess that’s a bandwagon everyone has to jump on.

[Anonymous]

I'm saddened to hear about MITRE's recent challenges. It's a historic organization and part of American R&D history. Many important developments came from MITRE that have greatly benefited and protected the nation. My best wishes to a great company and its current and former employees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RAND Arroyo went from $38,122,000 in core funding in FY25 to $10,892,000 in FY26. JFC. Who did they piss off in the Army to get at 71% year-over-year cut?

Our CEO doesn’t really care about Arroyo only his AI division, so why not just cut the budget?

As always, the people who hate RAND the most are the people who work at RAND.

jason matheny is RAND's savior..... saving the place from its long decline. the haters should just leave if they can't deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RAND Arroyo went from $38,122,000 in core funding in FY25 to $10,892,000 in FY26. JFC. Who did they piss off in the Army to get at 71% year-over-year cut?

Our CEO doesn’t really care about Arroyo only his AI division, so why not just cut the budget?

As always, the people who hate RAND the most are the people who work at RAND.

jason matheny is RAND's savior..... saving the place from its long decline. the haters should just leave if they can't deal with it.

savior = destroying ftfy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

Add in IPR...probably about 600 total employees.

And a lot of the execs are functionals, like HR. It’s not a fair analysis.

Yeah, I doubt that general counsel has a lot of people working for him.

Anyway, eight execs in the FFRDC. Looks like a head guy and seven “division” or “program” leads under him. 450/7 = 64, which is reasonable. The “data science division” seems a bit out of place among those others, but I guess that’s a bandwagon everyone has to jump on.

There are SVPs and VPs that are dead weight on the IPR side...they don't market or write proposals. Not my experience with true gov contracting firms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CNA has too many line item VPs. Some who can’t even speak or put together PPT presentations. $250k-$300k salaries.

CNA has 20 senior executives listed on their webpage. That seems quite excessive.

https://www.cna.org/about-us/leadership

About 450 total people in the CNA FFRDC. 450/20 = 22.5 people per executive. That Span of Control seems way too small.

Add in IPR...probably about 600 total employees.

And a lot of the execs are functionals, like HR. It’s not a fair analysis.

Yeah, I doubt that general counsel has a lot of people working for him.

Anyway, eight execs in the FFRDC. Looks like a head guy and seven “division” or “program” leads under him. 450/7 = 64, which is reasonable. The “data science division” seems a bit out of place among those others, but I guess that’s a bandwagon everyone has to jump on.

There are SVPs and VPs that are dead weight on the IPR side...they don't market or write proposals. Not my experience with true gov contracting firms.

It's time for Katherine to retire.