I know that businesses that rely on defense contracts can be impacted by the economy and political whim. Are the national labs like Berkley, Ames, Sandia, etc. as volatile in their funding and employment stability?
They are some of the least volatile jobs around (though not all of those you mentioned are actually “national labs”). Funding at the labs mostly seems to just shift some of the project priorities around more than anything else (e.g. Los Alamos no longer does any wind energy research due to funding yet their overall budget didn’t really change). It seems that the labs also generally try to avoid laying people off and would rather move them around to other related programs when possible, at least in regards to the technical staff.
I’ll add that this is based on my experience with one of them and second-hand knowledge of friends at a different one, and that experience is very heavily weighted toward PhD jobs.
Thanks!
Having worked with some of these organizations, I can definitely say that stability/volatility is not really the biggest concern. Academic credentials, bureaucracy, low pay relative to the market, and a general tendency to move slowly is what you should worry about.
Security clearances aren’t cheap either, so that can often be a plus if you’re doing security work for the big contractors. They would hesitate to remove you because it’s expensive.
Each defense contractor for which I have worked has laid people off during my time there. They are less volatile than the bulk of industry, but they do rise and fall with government spending. When I started at my current employer in 2006, spending was high and they were hiring left and right, just 5 years later there was a hiring freeze followed a couple of years later by layoffs. In contrast, the last NON-defense contractor I worked for started laying people off just a month after I arrived and within 6 months had eliminated 80% of their staff.
Bureaucracy and its tendency to make everything move slowly is really the main annoyance. Pay and benefits are not really that low compared to other peer organizations (and in some cases are better) and I’m not even sure what @NeoDymium means by “academic credentials” here.
Also, with defense contractors, it seems like you see layoffs occur more often but they are typically less catastrophic. The layoffs usually go with the ebb and flow of government funding but the government has a vested interest in keeping the companies afloat so there will never be funding issues big enough that any of those companies are at risk of failure. In other words, there will always be jobs out there again. In industry in general, companies that go through layoffs may never recover and those jobs may or may not ever reappear. That just seems to happen less frequently. Pick your poison.
This is really getting the cart WAY ahead of the horse, but it’s internship application season and my son is kicking the tires of a few of the national labs. I was just curious about how they are for long term employment in the even that it was something he first got and second enjoyed. I understand that the bureaucracy and pace can be possibly soul killing. We have a family acquaintance whose UG and PhD are from two of the world wide respected powerhouse programs. He left NASA after 5 years and got an MBA apparently because the culture drove him nuts. I’m sure that perception is very individual.
What about the civilian engineering jobs in the military, like Redstone Arsenal, assorted military bases, etc.?
On academic credentials: A lot of national labs and the like want to see that you’ve completed a graduate degree and have research work to show. A Masters is good, a PhD is much better. Many times they even offer postdoctoral fellowships at their own institution. Some of their own staff may work as professors at associated universities. Very academic in nature.
On pay: Benefits are generally high quality but it depends on the administration. They don’t pay badly but for the caliber of people they want to recruit, you’d get more money in private industry. Slow growth means slow promotions and raises as well.
On long-term employment: It’s rare you would get fired unless you do something truly egregious. Some people like this environment while others find it painfully slow and unfulfilling. They really would rather hold onto their staff for a lifetime, which is good if you like it but often a bad thing if you’re ambitious enough to want sustained advancement. Bell Labs, one of the most prominent and successful research labs, was in part so successful because it was the only game in town (owned by a monopoly in a tiny city in times of prolonged economic recession), and it faltered when other groups could offer better deals for their technical staff. National labs suffer from the same issue, at least for particularly in-demand professions like engineering. For pure sciences, they’re often the best game in town.
Hey, @boneh3ad, all three of those are listed on the DOE “National Labs” web page: http://energy.gov/about-national-labs
NASA is the most fun for people who are actually engaged in building space hardware or research aircraft. If you are a business type, the combination of low top salary for GS employees and the nature of congressional funding whims and some unrealistic cost bogies make it much less interesting. At least to nerdy types like me. So I am not surprised that a high achieving ivy leaguer with aspirations and interests to an MBA would not like it. A technical graduate from MIT could find some really state-of-the-art work if lucky, and most young engineers are engaged in interesting projects. Some may want to go onto technical or space project management … they may also stay.
The national labs are often run by other entities and you are mostly not civil servants. JPL employees are CalTech employees, Ames mention above is part of U of Iowa (but Ames NASA is a government facility with contractors).
And a lot of them have support contractors, at NASA often at a 2:1 or higher ratio to the civil servants. The civil servants are rarely laid off, the support contractors at say Kennedy did not fare well when the shuttle wound down.
And you could go work for Lockheed or similar, but when they lose a big program that you would be slated for, that is not good news either.
In this economy and with uncertain government funding priorities, it is hard to know where real stability is. I personally at 18 or 24 would take a chance on any job that I find interesting, worst case you have a great time, build up great skills and an interesting resume and move on. At 35 or 40 or 50, your need for security may increase.
That’s sort of what prompted the question; Sandia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. So, is it more stable to work at the National Lab owned by Lockheed or directly for Lockheed?
BTW, @PickOne1, he was an MIT grad (and PhD at one of the three west coast superstars). I’d guess though that he was in a position that wasn’t as “hands on.” I’m not sure. He’s the brother of an acquaintance. I’ll learn more soon.
DS has been interviewing with some defense contractors. He was just contacted to interview for entry level EE job with AMRDEC at redstone arsenal. Any opinions?
When you said Ames I immediately assumed NASA Ames. I’ve never heard of Ames Lab until now. My mistake.
Also, I and most I know don’t consider the academic requirements to be a drawback. In fact, most of the jobs that require a PhD do so for a reason: most of them legitimately need that sort of experience. They are research labs.
Also, far and away the majority of full-time hires in research positions at the labs come out of the postdoc program. Those programs are huge there. Although it’s not uncommon to skip that step for PhD students whose program works at or with the labs so that those that hire staff scientists already know them and their programs.
I also don’t think pay is dramatically different at the labs compared to industry. Maybe somewhat less, but the base level of research staff still starts out at 6 figures. Los Alamos County, for example, has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. That doesn’t reek of low pay. If the pay is slightly lower, it’s largely because the labs believe they can attract top people on the merits of the nature of the jobs available (and they are often correct). The labs offer a degree of research freedom not offered in industry most of the time and surpassed really only by academia. I’ve also not noticed slow raises. Maybe not incredibly fast but certainly not as slow as I’ve seen in some places either. All I am saying is that based on my firsthand experience, at least at one lab, I don’t agree with the above assessment entirely.
Labs like Sandia and Los Alamos (I think the only two run by for-profit contractors at this point) are run by contractors but the technical staff see minimal effect from it. The funding still comes from DOE and the contractors just manage. For the most part, they tend to leave the scientists to their work.
Contractors range widely in the scope of the work that they are doing, from multi-million, long-term development and manufacturing to small “mom and pop” contractors who supply personnel to work on government contracts. There are lots of government projects and contracts with positions that are filled by these personnel contracting companies. The companies bid to supply people, and they usually get a multiyear contract. They hire personnel for this specified contract position. At worst, I’ve seen someone hired on to fill 4 months of a remaining contract without any guarantee of being hired for another position. On the other hand, I know of long-term contract employees who have had a position for 20+ years. As contracts expire and are rebid, the companies tend to re-hire the existing personnel, at least at the technical level, so the long term employees have worked for several different contracting companies.
I would tend to recommend a direct position with a lab, if it is offered. Contractors can be long term, but often have a lot less choice of work and are often first to go during downturns or if projects get cancelled or descoped. The government employees typically are seen as long term hires that are to be nourished, mentored, and kept around whereas the contractors are seen either as temporary workforce or as people to consider bringing on direct (also fine … if you come in as a contractor).
But each lab likely has a different culture. And different projects, divisions, even individuals will see this differently. As engineers, many people really do only see the work performed and will love a superstar or even a star or hardworker … regardless of their badge (and again, your badge can change with time).
Unless you have multiple offers, I think any job at a lab, whether government or contractor would give you great exposure to what is really going on there and who has the interesting work (in some agencies, the government people have to do all the contract tracking and management and don’t do the fun technical work, pay differences seem to also be different from one place to another). If one job sounds more interesting than another, it probably is. And, really I would look for an interview where my interviewers were nice people who seemed really interested in bringing some young people on board, they will be better mentors and teachers than people who are either gruff or already feeling overworked and annoyed by having some dumb interns to keep entertained.