I've spent most of my career at them, with a bit of time in industry in between time at the labs. (For context: me = ~20years post Ph.D. in EECE, started career at one lab, later landed at a second lab where I still reside.) Labs are awesome environments: it's not too hard to get involved with projects that are pretty cutting edge scientifically, which is exciting if you're a science nerd like me. It's also nice not to have layers of management over me dictating what I do - the scientists play a major role in running the show, so you have much more control over where you end up going. That said, they are an environment where it's most easy to dictate research direction if you have a PhD or in some cases, a masters + lots of experience.
The pay isn't competitive with the giant Silicon Valley companies, and computing tends to be a little less bleeding-edge than the other scientific domains. The only place computing is at that bleeding edge is in the HPC world since the labs typically have machines like nobody else, so there is a lot of research to do in terms to utilizing them well and programming them.
The only other complaint I see for the tri-labs (SNL/LANL/LLNL) is that pretty much everyone is expected to hold a Q clearance (roughly equivalent to DoD TS + CNWDI). That can be an obstacle for some people. Not a really difficult process - lots of paperwork, interviews, patience while it goes through the system, and then the periodic renewal process and occasional random drug tests.
I personally love working at the labs and plan to stay for the rest of my career. I don't optimize my career around maximization of take-home $. For me, I want fair pay doing something I really feel like I get excited about in an environment where my employer treats me pretty well. The labs give me that.
The pay isn't competitive with the giant Silicon Valley companies, and computing tends to be a little less bleeding-edge than the other scientific domains. The only place computing is at that bleeding edge is in the HPC world since the labs typically have machines like nobody else, so there is a lot of research to do in terms to utilizing them well and programming them.
The only other complaint I see for the tri-labs (SNL/LANL/LLNL) is that pretty much everyone is expected to hold a Q clearance (roughly equivalent to DoD TS + CNWDI). That can be an obstacle for some people. Not a really difficult process - lots of paperwork, interviews, patience while it goes through the system, and then the periodic renewal process and occasional random drug tests.
I personally love working at the labs and plan to stay for the rest of my career. I don't optimize my career around maximization of take-home $. For me, I want fair pay doing something I really feel like I get excited about in an environment where my employer treats me pretty well. The labs give me that.