Ask HN: Has anyone worked at the US National Labs before?
Haven&#x27;t seen anyone mention a non-DOE lab, so figured I&#x27;d weigh in.<p>I interned twice with MIT Lincoln Labs, which among other things, helped build and deploy Radar for WWII which turned into building&#x2F;managing the technology for Air-Traffic Control, and then turned towards space.<p>They are primarily a DOD-associated research lab (even located on an US Air Force Base), and so most of the projects have some military-oriented mission. Their mission is entrepreneurial-minded (which I found cool), in that they do the &quot;basic research&quot; and prototyping to prove viability and then the DOD turns over the project to a contractor to make feasible.<p>While I was there I worked in their GeoIntelligence and Natural Language groups, doing research which I&#x27;d ultimately come to understand as being relevant for Project Maven (year 1) and PRISM (year 2). While I&#x27;m sure as an intern my contributions weren&#x27;t directly related to or otherwise leveraged for these programs, in hindsight it was clear that this was the bigger picture that the work was contributing to. Take from this what you will.<p>Most of the anecdotes that I&#x27;ve read through in the comments mirrors my experience. However, one thing I see missing was how opportunity was &quot;metered&quot; out. Each group I was in was organized like a research lab and the level of your academic progression limited (or opened) your ability to get access to specific projects&#x2F;work. Their pay scale was also dictated based on this as well. So if you have a BS, your ability to &quot;move up&quot;, doesn&#x27;t exist, but it does if you have PhD.<p>Ultimately, I was given an offer to work there, but ended up taking a SWE position in the Bay Area because I wasn&#x27;t interested in continuing my education and felt like my ability to have a career progression at MITLL would have necessitated that.