Taking the Road Back

MITRE's new employees are MITRE's old employees

Paul Kim

The new mobile workforce, created in part by dot.com startups and failures, and by serial downsizing by corporate employers, has led to worker dissatisfaction and a sense of distrust between many employees and employers. If the loyal employee is an anachronism, it is in no small part due to the disappearance of the loyal employer. At MITRE, however, there remains an old-fashioned commitment on the part of the employer, and it has generated renewed loyalty by numerous employees—particularly those who left MITRE to pursue other interests, only to return as rehired employees with a renewed appreciation for the work culture at MITRE.

In the end, some of these employees say, it is the culture of a workplace that creates job satisfaction. While compensation is always an important issue, money is not the primary factor in determining job satisfaction. Intangibles often account for genuine happiness in the world of work and that happiness is often measured in terms of an individual's relationship to his or her colleagues, to the kind and quality of work that is being performed, and to a sense of company loyalty.

MITRE's Human Resources study

A study conducted last fall by Senior Human Resources Generalist Nancy Enyedy and Human Resources Information Services Manager Jen Sheldrick examined why former MITRE employees returned. Based in part on 98 technical staffers who had left MITRE up to five years previously and who were rehired during an 18-month period (between March of 1999 and September of 2000), Enyedy and Sheldrick found that 42 percent had left MITRE to join Mitretek or Concept 5. The rest had left for career advancement in other venues or for other reasons. Returnees opted to come back to MITRE, according to Enyedy and Sheldrick's research, for several basic reasons: the work, the people, and the chance for a more "balanced" work life. In-depth interviews with rehired employees suggest they returned to MITRE having come to see it, after an absence, as a place where they belong, among colleagues committed to doing excellent work, and in an environment that stresses excellence rather than the bottom line. "That's a good news story," says William D. Albright, Jr., director of MITRE's two-year-old Quality of Work Life and Benefits Division.

"If you ask the average MITRE-ite when they leave what they'll miss, they'll say the people.' You almost hear that uniformly," Albright says. "Realizing that, on the one hand, MITRE has to run like a business, but at the same time one of our values is looking for the right outcome, there are no cutting corners or pinching pennies. It permits excellence in work. That's important to our employees."

"It's great to be back..."

Beverly Wood, manager of Corporate Identity within the Division of Corporate Communications, decided to return to MITRE in the fall of 1999 after six years with the Arthur D. Little Consulting Company in Cambridge. "It's great, really, to be back," she says. "It's nice to be able to make decisions that are not always based on money." Wood had worked as a writer and editor for MITRE from 1989 to 1993 and left feeling she had maxed out her opportunities at MITRE. "There were no advancement opportunities here at the time," she recalls. "I wanted more responsibility—it wasn't really money—and a greater variety of work."

Half a dozen years later, opportunities reemerged for Wood at MITRE, due in part, she says, to a dramatic change in her department and the infusion of more projects, more staff, and more occasions for advancement.

Coming back from the start-up world

With as much technical expertise as many MITRE employees possess, the attraction of dot.coms and start-ups is not hard to understand. It's difficult to overestimate the lure of the opportunity to flex intellectual muscles, to stretch intellectual wings, and to be a part of a smart, fast-paced, cutting-edge venture. For Paul Kim, a lead engineer in Intelligence Applications in 1991 and a six-year MITRE veteran, the opportunity to grow a company from the ground up was irresistible. "I wanted to manage, in the sense of running a company, not being a middle manager. I wanted to write business plans and help a company grow. They also offered me a lot of money," he says, adding after a pause, "I mean orders of magnitude higher."

Kim ended up working for Ampersand, Inc., a software consulting firm in Billerica, Mass., as the managing director. Later he was the director of a software engineering for River Delta Networks, a telecommunications manufacturing company. After eight years, he returned to MITRE as the principal information systems engineer in Aerospace Planning and Execution, saying he had become disenchanted with the start-up world. "Essentially, I thought the focus of the industry was more and more about making money rather than about doing quality work or creating quality products," he says. "I think, in general, MITRE has a much better culture. The focus of what MITRE is about is that it attracts people who are interested in doing good, interesting work, working in the public interest. Money is not the main attraction."

Balance is important

Enyedy and Sheldrick's report concluded, after both a statistical and a qualitative analysis, that MITRE offers genuine balance for employees in an age when balance is both very much sought after in work life and increasingly difficult to achieve.

The study looked at employees who had been gone five years or fewer and paid special attention to rumors that suggested that, to be promoted or to make more money at MITRE, an employee had to leave and then return several years later. The report pretty much put that rumor to rest, Enyedy says. "In reality, we discovered that raises and promotions were proportionate to an individual's time away from the company."

"It's not the salary, it's the package," Enyedy explains. While MITRE strives to pay competitive salaries, it can't pay what some of the start-ups offer. But it can compensate in other ways, she says, by consistently offering employees the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art technology doing "cutting-edge work" with top-notch colleagues, by offering a solid pension plan and, increasingly important, by allowing flex time. When you work for a startup, for example, Enyedy says, "You get the big bucks and the stock options, but you put in a lot of time. MITRE ends up looking like a better balance. It's good work. It's finding that, in hindsight, MITRE was a pretty good bet."

Flex time is a plus...

For Sherri Wilkins, a lead software engineer and the mother of two young children, MITRE's casual work environment is greatly appreciated, and the flexibility she is allowed to meet family obligations is critical. "I wanted to be in an environment where I could tend to my family's needs on a more flexible basis," she says. "If one of my daughters is sick, I can work at home. If I need to leave early, I can make those hours up during the week. I don't have to take vacation time." After leaving MITRE, Wilkins worked three years as a consultant for Noblestarsystems in Reston, Va. There the emphasis was, pretty simply, on making money. "You bill for every hour you work," she says grimly, and adds just a touch sardonically, "The more hours, the better."

Bev Wood

Beverly Wood is one of those employees who makes use of flex time. "I really like the flexible work life and benefits," she says, explaining that she occasionally spends the weekend in southern Maine tending to some family responsibilities, returns to work a bit later in the day on Monday, and makes up that time later in the week.

"Everyone else is laying off employees and giving them a little bit less," Wood says, "MITRE is giving them a little bit more."

Corporate Identity Products Manager Beverly Wood returned to MITRE after six years because she wanted to work for a company that has a positive impact on real people and solves genuine problems. For her, that company was MITRE.

Paul Kim, principal systems engineer, came back to MITRE after leaving to manage start-up companies. He laughs when asked whether flex time is important to him. After working 100-hour weeks at his former jobs, simply working a straight 40-hour week feels a little like heaven.

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