-Stagnant salaries w/ minimal raises and shrinking benefits
GTRI faculty are lumped into the state budget as teachers and it feels like we are treated as the lowest form of life imaginable when raises are discussed. The raises are ~1-3% and it can be two years or more between them. Combine this with inflation and the growing job market in Atlanta and you have situations where people are being hired in at higher rates than the people that have been here for several years. The largest raise you will likely ever see is a 6% promotion raise. (Which happens at most 2-3 times over an entire career.) If you happen to get a promotion the same year as merit raises occur, expect to receive a 0-1% merit raise since you're getting a 6% promotion raise.
The benefits offsetting a lower wage is somewhat valid at hiring, but the benefits are typically stagnant or increase price every year while raises are minimal. This typically results in a year to year reduction in your overall salary. A perfect example of this: The Board of Regents has added a $100/month fee for anyone that has their spouse on GT insurance. (If the spouse has the option of insurance at their own job.) This and the standard benefit price increase will negate any raise I saw this year.
-Easy to become over committed to multiple programs
If you establish yourself as being competent, be prepared to have everyone wanting you to work for them. It's good to have choices of what to work on, but be careful not to say yes to everything and end up having to work for free (no such thing as overtime for a GTRI engineer) to meet deadlines.
-Retention problems
We're losing RE2/SRE level engineers at an alarming rate. It has become a consistent phenomenon that we take in a new college grad, get them a security clearance, forge them into a decent engineer, and they jump ship to a better opportunity within a year or two of completing a Master’s Degree. (That's a fair strategy for career advancement and I wish them well.) But, GTRI is unable to replace them with engineers at the same level and experience. This results in pressure on the remaining experienced engineers to take on additional responsibilities leading to more engineers leaving. I’m very concerned that we’re going to reach a point where we’re unable to perform on key large programs leading to loss of customer faith and repeat business.
