Caltech (California) reviews

Pay is not competitive at all, the administration is not efficient, very weak infrastructure, too many systems are out of date

The pay is abysmal. This is the trade off for being at the top of your field. Caltech is the best school in the world to study science, and working there is a great opportunity and resume builder. They just pay next to nothing, because they know that the people working there are there for the job, not the money. After they brought in the corporate consultants (people from the corporate world to tell them how to save money), they threw the honor code out the window for staff (it still applies to professors and students). Prior to this, you could take a two hour lunch and go to the gym (for free), park for free, and make up time when you didn't work your full 8 hours. That all went away, as now you have to clock in and out using Kronos, they are sticklers for the rules (you have to take your lunch before the five hour mark or you get written up). The lab I worked in had an incredible vibe when I first started working there, where everyone enjoyed their job, was excited to be a part of Caltech, and couldn't say a bad thing about working there. Once they had the corporate consultants come in (after the deprecession), the whole ,morale of the department tanked once this happened.