The bureaucracy of all bureaucracies - Senior Software Engineer Leidos Employee Review

2.0
16 Jul 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work/life balance. It's easy to make up missed hours, and it's extremely rare that to have to work overtime. Pay is decent

Cons

Every single tool and program you use will be an ancient, in-house, buggy mess. Can be hard to change jobs if you work here very long, as every piece of technology they use is non-standard and/or obsolete, so you don't gain any experience with technologies still used by other companies. Your will only spend about 10% your work day actually coding. The rest will be spent dealing with massive amounts of bureaucratic red tape.

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5.0
16 Feb 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You are compensated well at the company

Cons

No cons to list currently.

3.0
27 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Leidos provides opportunities to work on complex government programs with meaningful technical challenges. Depending on the contract and team, there can be exposure to cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, systems engineering, networking, and mission-focused work that is difficult to find elsewhere. The company also has a large footprint, so there may be internal opportunities for people who are able to navigate the organization.

Cons

My experience was that the quality of management varied significantly by program. Communication around expectations, roles, and priorities was often inconsistent, and decisions that affected employees were not always explained clearly or handled in a transparent way. Work-life balance also depended heavily on local management. Flexibility that existed in practice could be changed quickly, and employees were sometimes left trying to reconcile changing expectations with existing workloads and personal obligations. In my view, the company would benefit from stronger oversight of program-level management decisions, especially where employee responsibilities, workplace flexibility, and performance feedback are concerned. I also found that technical decision-making was sometimes driven more by schedule pressure than by sound engineering judgment. On complex government programs, that can create unnecessary risk and frustration for employees who are trying to do things correctly.

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