US Naval Research Laboratory Employee Reviews about "treatment plant"

Pros

Camaraderie from scientists and coworkers

Cons

Offensive odor from water treatment plant; Lack of necessary training to succeed

Pros

Freedom to pursue areas of interest and the opportunity to take advantage of internal funding as well as ties to other DOD funding agencies. Cooperation among different research groups is usually encouraged. For the most part, the employment is stable and cut throat competition is not the norm. The support personnel are helpful and hard working and realize that their primary goal is to enable and support the scientific research.

Cons

Although better than most DOD labs, there are still many counterproductive rules - computer security is increasingly intruding into ability to carry out research. There is subtle agism and favoritism in some advancement decisions - group managers are powerless to provide financial incentives. Since all promotions are tied to levels of management, one is stuck with the very poor personnel skills one would expect from manager-scientists with no management training. Quality of life is mediocre. Nice view of the Potomac River plus the odiferous reminder of the Blue Plains sewer treatment plant next door. A once active health club is barely maintained and underutilized. Food service is mediocre and not health promoting - Subway and a cafeteria. Thankfully food trucks are now allowed. Under the FERS retirement system one is at the mercy of the stock market and government contributions are not as attractive as company 401K's

Pros

Working at NRL allows you to work on excellent research projects with a quality team of people

Cons

1) Government bureaucracy! 2) Facilities are falling apart. Some of the buildings need to be demolished, but they're standing due to some federal rules. Almost every roof is leaking. 3) Stinky neighbors! Sometime the smell of blue plains (DC's biggest water treatment plant) wafts over to us.

Pros

The people you work with are very nice and smart. The work hours are flexible. You can come in as late as 11am as long as you put in 8 hours. This is a good place to get research experience outside of your university. You get to work with full time researchers who do nothing but research 8 hours a day 40 hours a week. I didn't get any publications out of it as I only worked for 3 months, but I do know people who interned there longer and were able to get publications from it. This was also helpful experience to get me into a phd program (as I was a master's student). My supervisor gave me a good letter of rec. This also helped me get an NSF Fellowship. The reviewers even mentioned it as impressive in their comments. Another intern I worked with during the same summer also received an NSF Fellowship the same time as me. It is a very good place to work.

Cons

No one worked there who knew the code base that I needed to work in, and there was no documentation. They did give me time to learn it before programming new features into it. My supervisor and other researchers there did not do any of their own programming so they couldn't help on programming questions or anything like that. Luckily, I was good enough in Java to not need any help. There was a C++ backend, and luckily they did not ask me to modify that. The NRL campus is not an easy place to get to by public transportation. It's off a highway near Bowlings Air Force Base. And sometimes the air smells terrible as it is up wind from a water treatment plant.