Avantages

This place is great and we get to send stuff to space!

Inconvénients

If you're on Lab, wear or bring good walking shoes.

Avantages

Working with some of the smartest people on the planet, who are solving some of the most difficult puzzles of our age: Where did life come from? Is there life on other planets, or has there ever been? What is the future of our earth? This requires the contributions not only of top-notch scientists and engineers, but also support functions like business/finance, human resources, facilities, etc. Many people here are incredibly bright, and with some notable exceptions, have very little ego.

Inconvénients

Bureaucracy! JPL's relationship with NASA requires that JPL keep metrics on a number of different things that make no difference to anyone, but NASA hounds us for those metrics (or more to the point, the petty functionaries at NASA whose only jobs are to look after those metrics hound us for those metrics). It can be a real waste of time, and it gets the attention of JPL's top-level people because those metrics have been negotiated into Caltech's and NASA's prime contract for the operation of JPL. Opportunities for advancement are rare. JPL typically hires people in from the outside for jobs rather than advancing their own employees. Often you'll hear new managers talk with great authority about "JPL Culture" or how we've "Never Done It This Way Before" when if they would just listen to the people who've worked here for more than 10 minutes, they might start to get a clue.