NASA reviews

Latest round of management has been here for a couple of years, and has brought in their friends. No one with any experience in house is considered for promotion. Second in command is from an outside company and has been hiring all his previous managers into high salaried positions - without competition.

NASA, despite it's reputation amongst those who have never worked with it, is primarily a government bureaucracy. It is not the organization that gave us Apollo. The technology used in mainline spacecraft development programs is many years behind the current state-of-the-art, due to an overly risk-averse, conservative, and bureaucratic approach to engineering & program management. Perhaps due to advanced age of most of the workers, there is tremendous resistance to any solution that isn't similar to what has been done in previous projects. Due to civil service protections and lack of new programs, there are few management or leadership opportunities for young engineers or new hires -- you must wait for many years before a position above you clears out before you can get a position that can "make a difference".