Inside SAIC

An anonymous reader submits this profile of SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, the behemoth defense contractor/research outfit/spymaster.

Comments

Working at SAIC

[jelwell]

I worked at SAIC and the oddest thing there was that as an employee you were really dealt with like a contractor. You worked on your project until it was done, and when it was done you were left to your own accord to find a new project to work on. You could hope that your manager would take you with him/her to their next project - but your skillset wouldn't always allow that.

Very strange indeed, having to worry about your job all the time.
joe.

Re:Working at SAIC

[envelope]

My wife worked at SAIC, and the uncertainty of the job was part of the reason she left. Ironically, she spent the last couple of months there developing the re-bid to keep the project she was working on. She won the re-bid but quit anyway.
She liked the employee ownership though. We made some money on our shares when she left.
I've got another connection to SAIC: I was in the field artillery in the army and our fire direction control computers were made by SAIC.

employment and advancement

[ih8apple]

I almost worked for SAIC a few years ago. I was about to accept their job offer, but then I was turned off when discussing advancement opportunities within the company. Apparently, unlike most of geekdom which is ruled by skills, the only real way to advance in SAIC is to hang a bunch of degrees and certifications on your wall. Regardless of your skill level, degrees and certifications are what count towards promotions and advancement.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've met a ton of people with great credentials who are morons and many non-degreed and non-certified people who are excellent people to work and deal with. IMO, there's no hard and fast rule either way. Degrees don't make you smart and vice versa.

Re:employment and advancement

[William Tanksley]

Partially true, but SAIC pays you to get those degrees and certs, since they are required by most of SAIC's customers. They pay for the class and and books in full so long as you make a C or better.

Their policy here makes sense, considering that most of their customers (well, their biggest customer, at least; the US gov't) explicitly check each employee assigned to work on the project, and they don't take the time to verify specific knowledge, only certs, degrees, and experience.

The managers, as far as I've found, are very good at cutting through the BS to find real skill; you will get picked if you've got what it takes, but the manager may have to "sell" you to the customer based on some of your other credentials until you actually get something formal.

Good place to work.

-Billy

It's not all covert stuff

[Necrotica]

The city where I live in Canada is the provincial capital. A number of years ago the provincial government created a new health care agency called SHIN whose purpose was to facilitate the development of a provincial health care network. SAIC was awarded the contract to do all the necessary IT work involved to make SHIN's vision a reality.

They have done some really cool things. They utilized the existing Internet infrastructure to allow pharmacists in remote areas of the province to be able to send their prescription data to a mainframe here in Regina. They have also provided doctors with wireless communications using PDAs for appointments, emergencies, etc. The grander picture here is that since the province was wired with fibre-optic cable a long time ago (thanks to the wide-open geography and a telephone company with a lot of foresight) they plan on allowing doctors to view CT scans, MRI scans, etc. real time over a network. There are also plans in place to even have surgeries performed where a general surgeon is performing the operation in one location being guided by a specialist in a different location.

SAIC definately does some neat stuff and as time passes I hope that the work they do benefits the pathetic health care system we have right now.

I work for SAIC - This is a misrepresentation!

[N8F8]

We are a large company (40K employees an growing) working on many sizes of tech-related contracts - most small. Most importantly, we are employee owned- 100% employee owned.

The official line is : Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 company, is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States. We provide information technology, systems integration and eSolutions worldwide.

The important point is that we are very diverse. The best explaination of our corporate makeup is to describe a solar system of companies with SAIC corporate in the middle. The organzation is very flat and transparent.

As much as I like the cuetsy characterizations of SAIC as a spy haven with wizards and towers and stuff, the truth is less exciting. The vast masjority of our constacts are straight meat-and potato development and support work. We do just about anything tech related, and we do it very well. please disgregaurd the SIG below.