NASA reviews

The can-do attitude of the past is waning. People are afraid to take risks. Major programs that are failing are taking funding away from the technological investments that are needed to take us further into the solar system or advance scientific discovery. No one wants to stand up and say that the programs are failing because they're afraid of upsetting congressional constituents. NASA is a bait and switch. Advertisements and recruiting info say NASA is doing all these incredible missions and technology development. What they really should say is NASA is buying these incredible missions and technology development. This works for some people. If you're ok with exploring concepts that likely will never go beyond concept stage, work at NASA. If you're ok with writing requirements and then watching prime contractors do the design and development work from the periphery, work at NASA. If you want to contribute your own ideas, see them come to life and fly in space, don't work at NASA. Those opportunities are sparse if not non existent. So much inertia in the very aged workforce that most efforts to do things differently and more efficiently will likely be squashed or the people trying to do things better will get burnt out and leave. There is no incentive for dealing with poor performers. If you're in a PR, outreach, administrative or oversight role, morale is great. If you're in a technical position, morale is not as great.

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.