- Limited technical career path. "Moving up" generally suggests becoming a group or project lead, or working more with sponsor, but still doesn't encourage a solid technical leadership path.
- Underwhelming opportunities to support government work
- Extremely "top heavy", not doing enough (and not always enough interesting technical work) to retain talented junior/senior level engineers.
- Internal research program funds lackluster projects that sound buzzy but lack substance. Many groups are trying and failing to turn fuzzy concepts into formulas. Gets distracted with imaginary 100% solutions, but fails to take more practical steps that make high impact.
- Pay has come a long way, but still not competitive in the security space, especially for cleared employees.
- 80% of overall time/effort is spent managing work or convincing government (or internal) of work to be done, but 20% is the workforce contributing to projects. Feels like an inverted pyramid.
