Inside SAIC

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

Comments

SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Rocks

[kryzx]

One of the coolest things about SAIC is that it's employee owned. The structure of the company was truly revolutionary, and has a lot to do with its success.

I work for an employee-owned company that is modeled after SAIC, and it is pretty cool. You can clearly see that your work is contributing to the success of the company, which is driving the growth of the stock value, which is putting money in your pocket. And we attract a lot of top-notch people because of that.

If you didn't read too far into the article you might get the wrong impression, though. Twice on the first page they say that it's privately held, and it's only on the second page where employee ownership is discussed.

The "invisible company" angle of this article cracks me up. Seems like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an SAIC employee. Everyone knows about them. They're everywhere. Finding a person who hadn't heard of SAIC would about as easy as finding someone who hasn't heard of Microsoft. But I guess that's just my world. Good article, tho.

BTW, if you are a java programmer in the DC area interested in doing defense work with a great company, send me your resume.

This is what people need to be reading

[Blaine Hilton]

If people are not paranoid about governments watching everything and placing every tidbit of information in huge underground databases then this is the article that will open eyes.

I for one have never heard of this company before today and I'm pretty shocked. I've been pretty vocal about worries on TIA issues, but geeze...

On the other hand perhaps it was better "before" when we the people didn't know about everything and just believed blindly in our government to protect us.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I have found that the best way, when you find yourself in a difficult situation such as this, to secure your job is to kill anyone that has similar skillsets to you. That way you're always the go-to guy. The downside being that you can never sell your house and you have to make up excuses for your unnaturally gree grass all the time.

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.

Re:Private Company

[AlabamaMike]

SAIC will always be a private company. FYI, they don't even allow people outside the company to own stock. While you work there you are awarded pieces of the company as part of your compensation (beats the hell outta options, IMO), but when you leave you're forced to liquidate all your holdings in the company. Given the extremely sensitive nature of their line of work I'll bet this policy will never change.
-A.M.

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

Re:employment and advancement

[pmz]

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.

Large corporations are machines. If you don't exist on paper, you don't exist at all.

In all seriousness, if you were an HR person with thousands of employees to track, how would you track them? Get to know them around a campfire singing camp songs or, perhaps more conveniently, a datastore holding all your worthwhile attributes? If it isn't in the data model, it
can't be worthwhile, can it?

SAIC rocks.

[reaper20]

I work for SAIC, and employee ownership is pretty kickass, and the long list of "cool shit" that we do keeps getting larger and larger. My favorite part by far is that since everyone is an owner, the "retard rate" is alot lower - that guy slacking off is costing you money, so everyone busts ass.

The company is VERY conservative, lots of ex-military folks, but even conservative companies understand saving money, so at our division Open Source reigns supreme.

At our office we use Redhat, Debian, PostgreSQL, Bugzilla, and CVS almost exclusively. We all have linux desktops and laptops, even though the "corporate standard" is Exchange. We can get away with this because SAIC acts more like a cluster of tiny companies rather than a monolith. As long as we remain profitable, we can really do almost what we want.

My boss donates space to the local LUG at night to hold meetings, because they recognize the value of fostering professional development, AND it gives them a nice steady hiring pool.

If you ever have a chance to interview for SAIC then do it.

What does being listed have to do with secrecy?

[WIAKywbfatw]

This is one company that i certainly hope never IPO's...imagine taking decisions about secret technologies to the stock holders...

What, like these companies?

Boeing
Lockheed Martin
United Technologies

Being listed on the stock exchange hasn't lead to these companies (and many others like them) being denied defense contracts or them leaking military secrets so why should you expect that to be a problem for SAIC?

There's certainly more to it

[showmeshowyoukikoman]

After reading the article through two or three times, I can certainly say it's interesting. What is REALLY interesting though is the message embedded in the article. Didn't expect that, did you?

Seriously, check it out. ROT13 the article, then drop every other character. Finally, use the alphabet backwards starting a S for one char, then A for the next, I for the next, C for the next, and repeat.

VERY clever. The message is certainly worth the effort decrypting.

KIKOMAN

Re:Huh?!

[Mr. Slippery]

The tough question is how much of civial liberty is appropriate to give away in the interest of national security?

Zero.

The purpose of national security is to secure the civil liberties of the citizens. Trying to trade civil liberty for national security is like selling your kidneys on the black market to raise money to buy health insurance.

Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc

[cje]

The interesting point about SAIC is the "private market" for company shares that the company itself maintains. How well does that really work for employees who don't want to have a disproportionate share of their savings tied to their company's stock?

Well, for one thing, the 401(K) plan gives you a list of mutual funds/bonds/etc. of varying degree of risk to invest in, pretty much the same as any typical 401(K). You don't need to invest in SAIC if you don't want to (although you certainly can.) SAIC's company match is given in the form of SAIC stock, but that is hardly unusual.

SAIC gives its employees lots of chances to buy company stock (and stock options), and it gives out things like stock options and fully-vested shares as performance bonuses, but nobody is required to invest their retirement savings in it. If somebody's got 100% of their retirement funds in SAIC stock, that's because that's the way they wanted it.

I worked for SAIC way back in 1986 in NewPort, RI

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

When I was just starting out in the field I worked for SAIC in NewPort, RI. before the days of GPS. They designed a Satelite calibrated Loran system. The best part of the job was going out to sea testing the equipment. We would go out to find a submerged bouy, get to the coordinates, release the bouy to see how close we got. It was a fun job. Ah... but I was young and I wanted my career to evolve and work with embedded controllers. I'd have to say the SAIC partys were pretty cool too.

Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc

[Mr. Bad Example]

Seems like you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an SAIC employee.

Man, government regulations are getting harsh.

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.