Harvard University reviews

Limited career trajectory, shrinking by the day. Positions are extremely competitive and are often posted with internal candidates in mind. Qualifications matter less than who knows you - so reach out and make friends and market yourself. Harvard top brass used to make gestures of respect toward the union, but unions no longer have the clout they used to, and Harvard top brass is no longer shy about laying off 20 to 30-year veteran employees without more than a few days' advance notice. If your job responsibilities expand worthy of a higher level, you won't be recategorized at a higher pay grade and your salary won't expand further than the cost of living increases negotiated by the union. Promotion-related raises seldom happen - Harvard wants to pay you less, not pay you more. Living costs are high in the area, and many long-time older employees have to share housing with roommates. It goes without saying that full-time permanent employees shouldn't have to live like students. If you want to progress in your career and income as you gain knowledge and skills, and your current job at Harvard isn't cutting it, your best bet is to pursue one of the rarely open higher positions in a different department or outside of the university. Harvard was a great place to work 10-15 years ago, and in a strong economy, you'd expect they'd offer more to employees, but instead they're offering less.

-No holistic onboarding process, in my case I largely had to train myself over the course of several months -Harvard sees no problem in promoting nontechnical individuals to supervise highly technical workers. Nontechnical Managers in technical positions cannot function adequately as they end up relying on easily manipulable personal relationships with individual employees to gauge the productivity of those they supervise. -Inability to stick to a solid strategy at the expense of employee morale: the organization spent over 2 years pushing a large comprehensive strategy while quietly creating exceptions for specific units for generally unsound reasons. Eventually, the number of concessions grew too much and the org just abandoned the strategy altogether, adding new products to what my organization offered in a rush (advertised as coming to the university before it was even funded), and not adding any more staff or funding to support this change. -Managers are not reprimanded, and are defended by HR for resorting to "I'm the boss and you listen to me" even if they have provided no justification for a bad decision. This was especially concerning given the expertise deficit at higher levels - Workers who spend time smoothing things over get recognized more than workers who spend their time trying to improve things, the organization is paralyzingly customer focused. (this is true regardless of what unit one is in)