Pros
- Great environment to learn new skills and build a resume - In house lab collaboration is excellent - Public Service Loan Forgiveness - Benefits are excellent, dental will pay for out of network, eye insurance (enhanced) excellent, Yale Health treatments essentially free (not counting your monthly payment). - Yale will put 10% into retirement account if you put 5% for M&P. - Pension plan for C&T staff that you can keep a portion of if you move up to M&P. - C&T benefits are significantly reduced in cost - great for entry level employees. - Tuition assistance and child scholarship (up to 50%) - Stable for biotech type employees in research - Upward mobility (more for M&Ps than C&Ts) - Understanding of work life balance if you stand up to management and enforce your 37.5 or 40 hour per week employment contract with valid explanation (most do not do this). - Allow for negotiation of salary. - I have always had excellent support from management. - I have been promoted 4 times and moved laterally once, starting as an entry level C&T. It was most challenging to move from C&T to M&P but there is upward mobility. - You can make a lifetime career out of Yale and it is a decent salary with benefits. - New Haven has great food and entertainment - Yale Advantages discount programs for almost everything you can imagine .
Cons
-Yale is very cheap (3-5% for M&P, 2.25-2.5% for C&T w/ limited steps that are about an additional 2% for C&T) with annual raises and works their reviews so "exceeds standards" is also rated with "meets standards." This is coming from an "exceptional" employee. -Annual raises are negated by cost of benefits (8-10% of income for M&P, C&T is almost free for health with costs early in employment and limited follow up, Yale pays for eye and dental) and parking is expensive (2-3% of income for all staff). - Union staff are collective bargaining so all are treated the same with raises and discipline is strongly enforced with union staff in large departments. -Bias toward admin staff with higher salary in administrative positions and PhD education preferred in research. -Underpays PhD and graduate level education significantly if you are not faculty, especially entry level. -Union environment causes significant strain - I have worked both sides and M&Ps are treated far better than C&Ts. -Regimented departments really hinder collaboration in research with multiple organizations, especially outside the university. -"Forced" overtime for M&P, post-doc, post graduate, and entry level faculty research staff without compensation and Yale looks the other way and seems to encourage this process to save money. With "forced" its a "hey, you don't mind coming in and doing this?" last second requests that younger people especially will say yes to without realizing the impact of burnout. - Yale will put most research jobs in a "22" category to save money. This places most experienced research staff as entry level even though they perform in a position 1 - 3 levels above that. Remember to aggressively negotiate your starting salary because of this.