Inside SAIC 293
An anonymous reader submits this profile of SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, the behemoth defense contractor/research outfit/spymaster.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Inside SAIC
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian
SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Rocks (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Private Company (Score:5, Interesting)
-A.M.
SAIC rocks. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sensalism to hide the author's ingorance (Score:2, Interesting)
SAIC _has_ bid against itself for government contracts (highly embarassing). This is because the company is very diversified and has little vertical control coordination. Each unit operates like a small business. They are responsible for their own profit/loss. I've known a unit a unit to sub-contract to another company, because they didn't know the capability was already in house.
Employee ownership:
All employees are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc (Score:1, Interesting)
How can this be? In a country that has a oil industry of over 40 billion US$ a year, how can a known US defense contractor and spymaster get hold of all the computer systems? Well, some time ago (about six years ago) the president of Venezuela, seeing the inminent election of Hugo Chavez as the next president, hurried a deal between SAIC and PDVSA to create a PDVSA subsidiary called INTEVEP. INTEVEP was the technology provider for PDVSA and, as specified in the contract, it had a monopoly of all technology related operations in the state owned PDVSA. The idea was this: PDVSA gave all the infrastructure and hardware (computers, offices, etc), and SAIC gave almost nothing. At the end they where 50-50 partners (how come, nobody knows
When the oil strike started on december, INTEVEP was one of the first to stop working, cancelling contracts with thousands of independent contractors who, to this day, remain on the streets without a job. Meanwhile, the people who took over the administration of PDVSA and relaunched the operations started to cease the contract with SAIC and decided to liquidate INTEVEP.
Guess what??? The contract signed 6 years ago says very clear that, in the case where PDVSA cancelled the contract, it had to pay (buy to) SAIC for all the INTEVEP properties, which were given by PDVSA as its part of the agreement.
In the end, PDVSA has paid over a hundred million dollars, and a lot more has to yet be paid for infrastructure and obsolete hardware that had been bought by them in the first place.
Re:This is what people need to be reading (Score:3, Interesting)
You won't hear about most defense contractors. In truth, they are everywhere--a dime a dozen. Some small doing integration work, some immense building B-2 bombers or Eshelawn. SAIC isn't anything special, really, other than some of the other things mentioned here (employee ownership, etc.).
If this article is any eye-opener for you, then please don't turn around...
It's an interesting experience working for SAIC (Score:5, Interesting)
Do keep in mind that experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
With that in mind, it was definitely an experience working for a devision of SAIC. I actually spent a week in corporate HQ looking for some data and the atmosphere there was kind of weird. An odd combination of arrogance and insecurity based on performance. The only way to justify your existence and paycheck when you work for SAIC is to be clocking hours against a billable project. When that project is done you had better hope the management above you has found another project to work on or you'll be out on your ass. All of the worst parts of being a contractor, but without the higher pay.
I worked for SAIC way back in 1986 in NewPort, RI (Score:3, Interesting)
Used to work there; contract died... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SAIC is Employee-Owned - Employee-Ownership Roc (Score:1, Interesting)
-- A group of developers at my company entered negitiations with the local SAIC Head-Guy to move to SAIC. When negotiations between the group of employees and SAIC broke down, the Head-Guy called my company's HR department and ratted them out. HR was not amused.
-- Two local SAIC offices bid against each other for the same contract. One office got the win, the other the pink slip. Classic!
Re:Private Company (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This is what people need to be reading (Score:3, Interesting)
It reminds me of seeing in one of the old building from the Manhattan Project a large red button with "magic" written on it in a halway with nothing else. We had all sorts of theories about what it did (the building does nuke power stuff, we occasionally had meetings in there). Turns out it was simply the building emergency power shunt.
As for saic, they supply our Q clearence office workers (not the secretaries). These are the guys that print out checks, manage our administrative machines, networking contractors, and that sort of thing. A lot of thier involvement with secret stuff is in supplying that manpower. Of course they also have thier own research staff in other places (much like lockheed-martin or other defense contractors).
The underground tunnels are empty. The Q clearence "secret" stuff is usually mundane. Usually if it really is something secret you are not going to know something about it (take the f117 or sr-71 projects for example). If you do, it is so remote and little that you are going to be wrong or just a very lucky guesser.
Re:Internal Pyramid Scheme? (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Employee Ownership is a crock - since so many of the shares continually circulate - due to employees being laid-off so quickly.
2. Since so many employees are desperate for work you've got to continuously protect your project from being swamped by SAICers like the only lifeboat at ship sinking.
3. The bureacracy is mind-numbing. This is a big DoD company that takes forever to do anything.
4. They bought belcore, which is now telcordia. This is the huge incompetant telecom vendor that sells most of the bad & expensive software to the huge & incompetant telecoms. Seriously - I've seen contracts they've written & Qwest signed that stated that a given product would cost $6m and that Telcordia had the right to raise the price if they didn't sell enough copies. I estimated that almost anyone else could develop a better product for $500k.
5. In the parts of the company that I worked in there was very little interest in providing good customer service. Instead the project teams seemed to be completely wrapped up in internal politics, and the customers were getting screwed.
While there I never recommended any of my friends to join our team, and I'm now glad to have gone on to greener pastures.
Re:SAIC rocks. (Score:1, Interesting)
Fits my impression of the place very well. Lots of career military, especially in management. Pretty much have to have spent most of your adult life at a certain level in the military to get into management. Most of these folks have a really hard time understanding how private business works - have a hard time dealing with the elusive nature of power (what? No formal chain of command?), with a lack of documented protocol, with the willigness to make cost/revenue trade-offs, and with the whole private sector marketing culture (yes, there is more to a sale than responding to an RFP).
I also have noticed a LOT of evangelical fundamentalist Christians in the organization. Overall, a very very conservative culture. I feel bad for any gays that work there.
Re:Private Company (Score:1, Interesting)
Only employees may buy and sell shares of SAIC stock. If you are not an employee, you will not be able to dispose of your stock. So it's entire value would then be the physical paper it's printed on (and NOTHING more.)
It's not like regular stock.
Psi Spy (Score:2, Interesting)