Anonymous
Post 01/13/2026 19:29     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:Do you think there will be layoffs at some FFRDCs this month? I figured there would be some early this month after the holidays, but haven’t heard of any and we’re almost halfway through the month. More interested in the labs.


I hear more coming later this month or in February. All rumors.
Anonymous
Post 01/12/2026 18:58     Subject: FFRDCs
Do you think there will be layoffs at some FFRDCs this month? I figured there would be some early this month after the holidays, but haven’t heard of any and we’re almost halfway through the month. More interested in the labs.
Anonymous
Post 01/12/2026 07:14     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"


who is this person? is he respected at rand? -someone who knows nothing about rand


ideally you would want your chief research officer to know how to run or at least understand an OLS regression output


Not important. His value is in his FFRDC leadership experience, not in reviewing R code. I'm sure this guy has management experience running large FFRDCs. Mark Peters managed Battelle, Idaho National Laboratory, and Argonne.


He has never ran an entire FFRDC before, much less multiple ones. This is the first time.
Anonymous
Post 01/11/2026 16:22     Subject: Re:FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:If you give them $100, only $30-40 will go to labor. Overhead and fee are taken off the top (maybe 60%) and then layers of non-technical and expensive management who have nothing to do with the task will charge an extra 5-10% (the L6 department manager, L7 division director, L7 chief engineer, and L5 program manager may get 2-4% each). These people should charge the already scraped overhead budget that is are allocated by the corp but they want to reserve those funds for pet projects so this is a sly double tax. After all this, the task lead sometimes has to additionally give funds to management pets, usually even more incompetent people who can never seem to find coverage (and often end up with roles like “group lead”). If you are a government COR you should demand the org chart for each task and check the invoices against it.


Spot on. I resemble the GL comment.
Anonymous
Post 01/11/2026 13:04     Subject: Re:FFRDCs
If you give them $100, only $30-40 will go to labor. Overhead and fee are taken off the top (maybe 60%) and then layers of non-technical and expensive management who have nothing to do with the task will charge an extra 5-10% (the L6 department manager, L7 division director, L7 chief engineer, and L5 program manager may get 2-4% each). These people should charge the already scraped overhead budget that is are allocated by the corp but they want to reserve those funds for pet projects so this is a sly double tax. After all this, the task lead sometimes has to additionally give funds to management pets, usually even more incompetent people who can never seem to find coverage (and often end up with roles like “group lead”). If you are a government COR you should demand the org chart for each task and check the invoices against it.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 21:04     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"


who is this person? is he respected at rand? -someone who knows nothing about rand


ideally you would want your chief research officer to know how to run or at least understand an OLS regression output


Not important. His value is in his FFRDC leadership experience, not in reviewing R code. I'm sure this guy has management experience running large FFRDCs. Mark Peters managed Battelle, Idaho National Laboratory, and Argonne.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 20:35     Subject: FFRDCs
PP again. I started as an L4 with 20 years experience at 160k in the systems engineering job family. I left with 25+ years experience as an L5 at under 200k. The salary cap for an L5 SE at the time was right over 200k. This was a couple years ago, I'm sure it's gone up.

I'm not saying Mitre pays poorly. I'm saying Mitre pays LESS than comparable sized defense contractors.

I was a group lead too, couldn't hire a lot of people due to them asking for salaries i couldn't give them. Salaries they were already making.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 20:16     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I wish MITRE success in it's transformation. Godspeed.
Does anyone know what salary range they're offering for AI experts? I don’t mean people who can download an LLM from huggingface. I mean building engineering applications.

AI is (one of?) the highest paid areas of Mitre. Cyber and EE are next. Paybands overlap, but generally an L5 will be paid more than an L4, more than an L3, etc.

Overall Mitre doesn't pay very well compared to other defense contractors.


Then why is Mitre so much more expensive than others? Including more expensive than other FFRDCs Even their new grads with no experience are pricey.


PP. When i was there the bill rate was 2.5x your salary. They had a LOT of overhead, layers upon layers.

At other defense contractors I've seen as low as 1.4x and typically at 2x.

Couple that with unnecessary layers of management at Mitre, the cost really adds up.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 20:11     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I wish MITRE success in it's transformation. Godspeed.
Does anyone know what salary range they're offering for AI experts? I don’t mean people who can download an LLM from huggingface. I mean building engineering applications.

AI is (one of?) the highest paid areas of Mitre. Cyber and EE are next. Paybands overlap, but generally an L5 will be paid more than an L4, more than an L3, etc.

Overall Mitre doesn't pay very well compared to other defense contractors.


Then why is Mitre so much more expensive than others? Including more expensive than other FFRDCs Even their new grads with no experience are pricey.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 17:04     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"


who is this person? is he respected at rand? -someone who knows nothing about rand


ideally you would want your chief research officer to know how to run or at least understand an OLS regression output
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 16:53     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"


who is this person? is he respected at rand? -someone who knows nothing about rand


Highly depends on who you talk to. Ask someone with a background is rigorous research and they are unlikely to have kind things to say about him being named as the head of research. Ask someone from the new Global Emerging Risks Division who is keen on the AI hyper focus and rapid response research? Get ready to hear what they imagine to be the choir of angles singing praises and some snide remarks about the depth of expertise that made RAND what it was… until recent changes like this. Scroll back in this conversation and you can see clear examples of each.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 14:52     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I wish MITRE success in it's transformation. Godspeed.
Does anyone know what salary range they're offering for AI experts? I don’t mean people who can download an LLM from huggingface. I mean building engineering applications.

AI is (one of?) the highest paid areas of Mitre. Cyber and EE are next. Paybands overlap, but generally an L5 will be paid more than an L4, more than an L3, etc.

Overall Mitre doesn't pay very well compared to other defense contractors.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 13:06     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"


who is this person? is he respected at rand? -someone who knows nothing about rand
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 12:07     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:I wish MITRE success in it's transformation. Godspeed.
Does anyone know what salary range they're offering for AI experts? I don’t mean people who can download an LLM from huggingface. I mean building engineering applications.
Anonymous
Post 01/10/2026 12:02     Subject: FFRDCs
Anonymous wrote:The last name of the new RAND officer is Mitre.
The new headline "Mitre will lead RAND's U.S.-based research enterprise"