Mathematica reviews

The organization lacks commitment to diversity beyond it being a "buzz word" despite diversity awards, community service work, and a nicely written but hollow diversity statement on the corporate website. There is no diversity/cultural competency training, no mentorship or affinity group programs, diverse employees are not asked to help with recruitment, and diversity/cultural competence is not a topic in interviews. Mathematica does have a summer fellow program for people doing research on minority groups but ironically few of these fellows are racial and ethnic minorities. There are few people from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the organization, especially in the research divisions and among senior management. Staff exhibit very little cultural competency or awareness and can be very quick to judge or assume without trying to understand something from a different cultural or personal perspective. However, there is a lot of gender diversity and limited diversity of Asian American/Pacific Islander, Arab American, and international backgrounds. I admit that I am not an underrepresented minority but if you are and are considering Mathematica you should find an organization that does more to actually support you professionally day to day and holds itself and employees accountable for diversity. Professional development opportunities are limited: there's no professional development plan and few company sponsored professional development opportunities. Your development as a research professional is not going to be about learning new theories in your discipline, research and evaluation design methods, or new quantitative or qualitative tools and techniques but learning about how Mathematica does these things. This is an important distinction since Mathematica and its senior managers are not necessarily up on the most current research or practices and many are unwilling to use them since they are not safe or familiar. The culture is very uniform. The structure is very hierarchical (which some may like). These two things stunt innovation, growth, and change. In general, the company goes with what's been done before because it has worked in the past rather than try to develop new or improved practices. Therefore, reports and briefs are a cookie cutter version of one another regardless of whether you are studying an early childhood program or an employment program. Also, internal policies do not change and suggestions may be encouraged but will probably not result in anything actually happening. Success depends on your willingness to do things the "Mathematica way" and conform not your capacity to truly lead by developing new methods. Managers and staff are nice but not necessarily open minded, emotionally intelligent, or supportive and can be very judgmental toward things that are different. The company does a poor job of integrating new staff and getting them good work; it may take 6 months to 2.5 years for you to truly begin to get work that will interest you. This may have been fine in the past but this is an era where workers are expected to change jobs every few years, especially if their work is unsatisfying. Also, because the culture and people are so uniform, you'll have a hard time if you come from a background or have experiences and perspectives that are different from other staff. I would say this is especially true in research.

The quality of the work is often lacking. The company’s deliverable reports (publicly available on the website if you want to see examples) seem produced by rote. Their structure is the same regardless of whether the methodology was quantitative or qualitative, and whether you’re on a project studying outcomes for low income kids enrolled in a health program, a nutrition study, a SNAP implementation study, an evaluation of an early childhood program, or a teacher salary study. Often, even words are the same across incredibly varied projects. Methodologically, the company does things a certain way because they’ve already done it that way once (or a hundred times) before and it was successful, so why take a risk doing it differently. Research methods and analyses are not tailored to the problem at hand. Related to the above, the research lacks theory. You can’t produce real research that isn’t *explicitly* guided by theory – it compromises the whole observation process. Also, lack of familiarity with qualitative research compromises quality of those projects. And senior managers in the survey division are not familiar with survey research, which makes it difficult to work for them on a project. Success at the company is highly dependent on how well you conform. See above about reports being identical. This is ironic given that research is about brainstorming, model building, and problem solving, all of which require imagination and creativity. There is no diversity. Despite office locations in cities with diverse ethnic and racial populations, the professional staff (and certainly the company leadership, especially in research) are overwhelmingly white. There is little discussion of cultural competence. Projects that require cultural competency are given short shrift. The company is very hierarchical. This can be a “pro” for some people, but I found it very constraining. The matrix-style organization means people in leadership positions easily evade accountability. I have worked in two organizations prior that were managed in a matrix style, and I had never come across this problem before. At Mathematica, responsibility for management decisions always seems to be someone else’s problem or fault. There is also a culture of blaming staff at the level below yours for project work not done properly (though, granted, this problem is not overwhelming). Mathematica does a terrible job of integrating new staff into projects. There is little understanding that while you are waiting for months to be integrated into the company, you have already begun to look for a new job and no longer feel loyal to the company. You also lose a sense of ownership over your work in this process. And it is disheatening when that lack of work during your first year is held against you at performance review time. At Mathematica, "survey research" means managing survey operations, not actual research. This totally changes the nature of the job! Applicants should be aware and ask many *specific* questions about the nature of the tasks during the interview process. If you're a survey researcher with a publication record, you will quickly find yourself going backwards here in terms of skill development, career development, and publication opportunities. You no longer have opportunity to conduct research, play with data, or use your stats background. The development of your CV suddenly halts. The survey research job is basically a glorified secretarial job. In terms of methods, Mathematica is not at all on the cutting edge. It often plays laggard to new developments in the field of survey research.