Great place to have a job, not a good place to grow a career - Senior Member Technical Staff Draper Employee Review

3.0
17 Jan 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

This is a great place to have a job - the work environment is generally good. They have good benefits, average vacation, and are very flexible if you need to re-arrange your schedule around family needs. The work is interesting and the people are smart.

Cons

Draper is a bad place to try to grow a career. As a practice, they only promote people who have led successful projects (i.e., projects that led to follow-on revenue). There is no path to promotion for people who choose to focus on technical work or for people who agree to lead riskier projects less certain of successful follow-on funding. When they want upper level technical staff they hire from outside and do not look to advance their own people. Communication has generally been horrible between upper management and the rest of the company. However, we just got a new CEO (in Oct 2014) and hopefully that is going to change. There is very little support for software engineering - IT caters only to administrative and management functions and it is very difficult to use any current software tools, packages, etc. that are available to enable better software development.

Explore other reviews about Draper

5.0
15 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture and brilliant colleagues. Strong and relevant mission. Interesting, challenging, and diverse work. Managers are supportive and inclusive.

Cons

Company wide communication could improve at times.

4.0
17 Apr 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Dynamic work environment with many opportunities to get experience in a variety of fields. Management is accommodating and respectful of employee time.

Cons

While Draper works on a wide variety of projects, I found I didn’t get much of a say in what I was working on. I was placed on projects that didn’t align with my stated preferences.

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