falls short - Field Interviewer RTI International Employee Review

2.0
Aug 23, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Choose your own hours, with major caveats. Some travel.

Cons

Upper management has slowly been chipping away at everything that was good about this job. RTI was recently voted one of the best places to work, but this is not going to be your experience at the bottom of the ladder. We used to take yearly training trips to a nice destination, expenses paid, since covid they have replaced that with short zoom trainings with no hint of bringing travel back. They also suddenly switched from a weekly pay period to bimonthly without any input from employees. The rules constantly change and affect the way we can do the job itself. Things like "choosing your won schedule" ring hollow when you re required to work on certain days and times. The work itself is exponentially more challenging as the political landscape changes and more and more people claim to hate the government. When employees are threatened with violence, had guns pulled on them like I have, management does nothing.

Explore other reviews about RTI International

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

RTI has a good mission

Cons

Adaptation to sudden federal funding loss.

3.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work and reasonable working hours

Cons

If you're a PhD who enjoys research and hopes to use empirical research skills at a research institute, you'll likely be disappointed as I was. Projects in my business unit were largely implementation projects that required very little creativity or data analysis. I was told by my manager that empirical-research projects are harder to come by and when those opportunities do arise, everyone wants them. Even then, project directors are very unwilling (in my experience) to let you branch out to other projects. Using any overhead time to work on your own research is also discouraged, so I ended up working on manuscripts in my personal time. And there's no funding to attend conferences either. On top of all of this, constant layoffs create an aura of uncertainty and the feeling that you're lucky to even be there even when compensation for similar roles in private sector is far better.

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