 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|||||
|
|
|
Home > Employment > Working at MITRE > Trends and Highlights > | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Long-Term Employees Bring Stability and Continuity
When Paul Breen looks back at the four decades he has spent at MITRE, he sees a career that has offered opportunities for creativity, public service, collaboration with talented colleagues, and variety. "I went to work not always knowing what was going to happen that day," said Breen, senior principal human factors engineer with the Center for the Air Force in Bedford, Massachusetts. Long-term employees say the opportunity to apply their creativity to interesting, important problems is what has kept them at MITRE, even when their talents were in high demand at other companies. According to MITRE's Human Resources department, 15 percent of the MITRE workforce — or 717 out of 4,918 employees eligible for benefits — have worked for the corporation 20 years or more. In contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the year 2000, 11.4 million people, or 9.5 percent of all workers, had been with their current employer for 20 years or longer. MITRE's corporate culture MITRE's comparatively high number of long-term employees indicates a corporate culture that values experience and encourages growth from within. And the corporation is gaining recognition from outside organizations, such as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), for implementing policies friendly to older workers. "We offer our sponsors expertise in systems architecture; we also offer institutional memory," said William D. Albright Jr., director of Quality of Work Life and Benefits for MITRE. "Project leaders on the government side come and go, but we offer continuity. Longevity is, I think, important because that helps to facilitate this continuity and stability for our sponsors." Worth celebrating Every year MITRE hosts dinners in Bedford and Washington for employees celebrating their 20—, 30, 30—, and 40—year anniversaries with the company. At the celebration in Bedford, Breen and Myron Leiter, a communications engineer, were honored for devoting 40 years of service to the corporation. Seventeen employees were recognized for serving 30 years, and 83 others for logging 20 years.
To some, even 20 years may seem like a long time to work in one place, but in Breen's eyes, these employees are almost "newbies." In a videotaped message shown at the Bedford event, Breen dispensed some advice to "short-timers" who have only been here 20 years: "The key to success at MITRE is to find the problem, find the people, work to make them successful, and have a good time." Breen's remarks provided telling insight into why he and many of his colleagues have chosen to spend most or all of their professional lives at MITRE. His emphasis on problem-solving, on collaborating with others to do important work for the corporation's sponsors, and on enjoying the job sounds similar to other employees who discuss their reasons for staying at MITRE for so long. Many of them have both witnessed and shaped unforeseen changes in MITRE's mission to its government clients, as well as the ways information technology are applied.
All that is hard to walk away from, even when retirement age comes —
and goes — for many of MITRE's long-termers simply can't bring themselves
to make a clean break. Many MITRE employees "retire," but often stay aboard
as consultants, thus keeping their hands in the technology they use and
maintaining ties with the corporation and their colleagues. Silvester Pomponi likes the work "It's still a fascinating place to work," said Pomponi. "I stayed in (after retirement) because I wanted to maintain contact with the technology and the kind of people you meet and work with at MITRE."
The nature of that work and the skill and dedication of their colleagues have enabled some of MITRE's veteran employees to build careers much different from what they had imagined. Pomponi expected he would use his electrical engineering degree from MIT, helping to develop guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles. But when he started at MITRE, he quickly learned his job would be broader than that, combining technical design work and human interaction. It eventually led to a chance to see both sides of the old Iron Curtain. Pomponi worked through much of the early 1960s on helping NATO members upgrade their air defense systems — and learned that technological solutions weren't always the end of the story, especially when political factors involving the collaboration among nations figured in. That principle applied even more when, in 1994, he was one of several engineers asked to conduct studies of the air defense systems of several former Warsaw Pact countries. "We had worried for years about the systems they had, and now we were researching how they could modernize to reduce regional strife and bolster their economies," Pomponi said. "It was an interesting twist. When you got to a people-to-people basis (with their counterparts), you found they were competent and well educated. They had just been in a technological vacuum for 10 to 15 years." Luxury of thinking "outside the box" Another word MITRE long-termers often mention is autonomy. Many of them quickly came to appreciate a work environment that allowed them to think "outside the box," identify problems, and explore all possible technological solutions in a way that allowed for creativity and intellectual honesty. "A lot of times in the real world, you have to work on a solution," said Breen. "We had the luxury of finding a problem. That's fun, because you get to define the environment in which you work. Instead of selling a solution, we were identifying a problem. We were paid, and have been paid, to identify problems. A lot of times, you have to become an interpreter of what the problem is. That's not easy, but it's interesting." Service to country And there is one other powerful motive for many of MITRE's most skilled employees to stay on: patriotism and a commitment to public service. In the post-September 11 world, many skilled professionals are taking another look at careers with a governmental or public service bent, but for MITRE veterans, that has long been a key motivational factor. They say 9-11 has brought out the best in themselves and their colleagues and added a sense of urgency to their public service mission — and they expect it to remain that way. "The country's awake to the problems now, and I assume MITRE will play a big role," said Everett. "But since I've always felt we were working for the good of the country, the way we look at our work won't change. People at MITRE were always interested in the public good, and that's why they were there." Related Information Articles and News Page last updated: May 21, 2002 | Top of page |
Solutions That Make a Difference.® |
|
|
