Did the Aug MITRE RIF happen? How many effected?

Jason Matheny took necessary risks, but the timing was off. If Biden or Harris was elected, his strategy would have been amazing. With Trump, these risks are causing a lot of problems for RAND.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Seems to be the consensus. If there's another RIF, they need to remove Jason and shutdown the horror show of GER.

I'm sure it's the consensus of the voices in your head that if you lose the DHS FFRDC it'll be because of GER, but responding to your own comments here is not going to get anyone fired.

I didn’t respond to myself. And I don’t think GER in and of itself is the only reason ffrdcs are in trouble. However, leadership sucks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Seems to be the consensus. If there's another RIF, they need to remove Jason and shutdown the horror show of GER.

I'm sure it's the consensus of the voices in your head that if you lose the DHS FFRDC it'll be because of GER, but responding to your own comments here is not going to get anyone fired.

Wait a minute. Are you saying RAND might actually not have HSOAC?? You’re one of the few posts defending Jason/GER so you probably are in the know…. maybe management yourself? If we actually lose HSOAC there is a lot of ppl that are about to lose their jobs…. Why isn’t management communicating this clearly??

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Seems to be the consensus. If there's another RIF, they need to remove Jason and shutdown the horror show of GER.

I'm sure it's the consensus of the voices in your head that if you lose the DHS FFRDC it'll be because of GER, but responding to your own comments here is not going to get anyone fired.

dp here... lol. if you think that only one person is responding here, then you really have no clue what's going on. lol.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Seems to be the consensus. If there's another RIF, they need to remove Jason and shutdown the horror show of GER.

I'm sure it's the consensus of the voices in your head that if you lose the DHS FFRDC it'll be because of GER, but responding to your own comments here is not going to get anyone fired.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Seems to be the consensus. If there's another RIF, they need to remove Jason and shutdown the horror show of GER.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

The only hope to save the place as even a semblance of its former self would be top level leadership replacement.

Anonymous wrote:What's up with JPL?

They have a pretty active subreddit, has not been pretty the past couple of years.

Anonymous wrote:Terrible leadership buys terrible results.

Perfect description of RAND right now.

It is possible some parts of Mitre promoted many people too quickly, but cronyism in promotions might have been more widespread than broad scale overpromotion.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Utah State University's Space Dynamics Laboratory just was awarded a new multi-year contract with AFRL (Kirtland AFB) that has a $1B ceiling (a) for work with AFRL on Space Vehicles and also (b) for supporting USSF generally.

"https://www.sdl.usu.edu"

(Yea, USU/SDL is UARC not an FFRDC, but the two groups have many similarities.)

$1B? Seems high. Link?

See the link that was in post you just reacted to. They have it as a news item. Also look at Space News or at AFRL or other sites...

Anonymous wrote:I'm not in the know anymore, but MITRE DHS task orders could not be created without the larger HSSEDI contract with S&T. I don't believe a new contract with S&T has been (or will be) done. Existing task orders were permitted to run through a period one year after the expiration of the contract, which would be until March 2026. I suspect as some TOs end between March 2025 and 2026, the staff that were supporting them are taking on the bulk of the RIFs. That was a massive work program. With ridiculous bloat I might add.

There's another very large sponsor source of contracts within the National Security Engineering area that was upwards of $50 M, and the sponsor for it is one that is making a dramatic shift in how they think and operate. Many of those contracts ran September to September time frames, and there were probably 100 staff on them. I'm afraid that won't end well.

A problem I used to see at MITRE was putting people on a direct project even though the individual had zero applicable skills, all designed to keep them off the internal funds. The problem (or one of them) was that this then reduced the amount of direct project budget to actually do the contracted work. I long felt there was a management theory at mitre that not achieving the goals of a project was exactly what they wanted so they could justify extending the work.

Parts of mitre also promoted people WAY too easily, like they were trying to just get more expensive for the same work. I guess it would provide higher percentages of 'load' for VPs to give out to their friends internally, but the sponsors hated it.
/Rant for now

This is a trick that FFRDCs to so they can meet their targets. Promote to raise the labor rates of your staff so you can quickly generate revenue to hit plan.

I'm not in the know anymore, but MITRE DHS task orders could not be created without the larger HSSEDI contract with S&T. I don't believe a new contract with S&T has been (or will be) done. Existing task orders were permitted to run through a period one year after the expiration of the contract, which would be until March 2026. I suspect as some TOs end between March 2025 and 2026, the staff that were supporting them are taking on the bulk of the RIFs. That was a massive work program. With ridiculous bloat I might add.

There's another very large sponsor source of contracts within the National Security Engineering area that was upwards of $50 M, and the sponsor for it is one that is making a dramatic shift in how they think and operate. Many of those contracts ran September to September time frames, and there were probably 100 staff on them. I'm afraid that won't end well.

A problem I used to see at MITRE was putting people on a direct project even though the individual had zero applicable skills, all designed to keep them off the internal funds. The problem (or one of them) was that this then reduced the amount of direct project budget to actually do the contracted work. I long felt there was a management theory at mitre that not achieving the goals of a project was exactly what they wanted so they could justify extending the work.

Parts of mitre also promoted people WAY too easily, like they were trying to just get more expensive for the same work. I guess it would provide higher percentages of 'load' for VPs to give out to their friends internally, but the sponsors hated it.
/Rant for now

What's up with JPL?