Horrible Management and No Future - AST Materials Engineer NASA Employee Review

General schedule pay scale for civil servants is not even remotely competitive anymore, especially on the archaic standard step scale. Promotions are almost entirely tenure based, nothing is really built around performance. There is no reward for exceptional performance besides more work and managers taking credit for your work. In addition to this the center has pretty much eliminated the technical promotion pathway in favor of saving the available GS14 and 15 levels for our over abundance of management roles. Labs are generally empty as we don't hire anyone capable of doing hands on work anymore in favor of contract managers and oversight roles. Most of the strong technical talent is being pillaged by the growing space industry across the US and especially in the local Huntsville area. Also there's a ton of infighting and territorialism at every level: center level, lab level, division level, and team level. Honestly I'm surprised anything was ever accomplished by all the arguing and stovepiping on who is "allowed" to do what.