What are the employment consequences to the engineers at NASA are if the rovers work well vs don't work at all. Thinking hard? Me too, and I have yet to come up with any. They are paid from your pocket regardless of whether or not they produce any results. Furthermore you don't get a say in whether or not you want to spend $820 million on pictures of rocks and dirt.
There are some who think this is great. They get to look at pictures of Martian rocks and dirt paid for by the rest of us. There are others (like me) who think it's a big waste of money and contrast privately funded research (Keck telescopes total $30million) with the Hubble ($1.8billion) and say the money would have been better spent in private ventures. Think what 10% of the Hubble budget could have accomplished if the people who directed the Keck had it.