Pros
Top pros: - Exceptionally talented and motivated co-workers - Increased visibility in your field (excellent to have on your resume) - Flexibility for research staff - Thoughtful leadership who want the best organization possible - Competitive salary Working at RAND gives you access to some of the most impactful projects possible across multiple policy fields. This can be a great place to gain professional experience and visibility in many areas. There is a virtuous cycle whereby important sponsors come to RAND because they did the last important study on a topic, which brings important sponsors back to RAND with important issues. Hiring is exceptionally competitive - RAND gets thousands and thousands of resumes. I've seen candidates with PhDs from MIT, Yale, CMU turned down because their job talk just wasn't good enough. If you are a researcher (PhD or experience), RAND is organized to maximize your flexibility (no set work hours, unlimited work from home, no dress code), choice of what projects you work on, project staffing on your project, and your autonomy. I also very much respect RAND management at multiple levels. Since the start of engagement surveys a few years ago, I have been impressed with the level of commitment that top management has on topics that were raised as issues: innovation, institutional agility, and diversity and inclusion. Pros to specific FFRDCs: - National Defense Research Institute: no micromanagement and a huge range of interesting and meaningful work - Project Air Force: stability (core funding that last the fiscal year) - Arroyo Center: core funding, but less than before - Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center: they have money
Cons
While RAND has a number of benefits and will continue to attract talent, there are a number of significant challenges to working at RAND: - The "internal labor market" that creates very high levels of anxiety, stress, and frustration - Accurately highlighted (and substantial) problems in innovation, institutional agility, and diversity and inclusion - No slack in project budgets to innovate, learn new skills, or mentor - A cumbersome quality assurance (QA) process that means it takes two years for anything to get published RAND suffers from an extreme matrix organization and byzantine bureaucracy where an infinite number of people can say no but no one seems able to say yes (without consulting 20 other people). RAND also has some pretty substantial problems with its organizational culture. For one, its focus on researchers makes administrative staff and other non-research staff feel left out. The "kill what you eat" model of bringing in projects that dominates a lot of RAND also contributes to a Darwinian and cut-throat organizational culture, particularly in the DC office. (All those insanely bright, talented, motivated co-workers? They are often your competitors.) Speaking of competitors, life at RAND can seem like an endless and terrible competition. There is constant informal competition and jockeying to be on projects. There are also literally competitions for new research ideas and internal opportunities. While formally asking people to apply and reviewing all comers makes sense from a fairness point of view, it takes a huge amount of unpaid time and leaves you with the feeling that you are always pitted against others. After all this endless competition to bring in work or to be on project, the time slices can be very thin on projects. This means you work a lot of unpaid hours to do a good job, continue to be asked to work on projects within the internal labor market, or turn in work that doesn't meet your own standards. This challenge can be particularly acute for senior researchers, who get more expensive over time but then become too expensive to use on projects for more than a few days here and there. Cons to specific FFRDCs: - NDRI: no core funding + "eat what you kill" staffing model = something close to anarchy - PAF: it's hard to break into PAF; they have many good things, but they're not for you - Arroyo: in an increasingly abusive relationship with the Army - HSCOAC: micromanagement + DHS dysfunction = warnings from everyone not to work in HSCOAC, for the love of God save yourself