Not great for an academic career
Pros
I worked in the Birdsall Research institute, one of the research arms of Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, for 13 years, from 1996-2009. It had attracted some outstanding scientists, and had an well-deserved reputation for excellent research, especially in genetics and brain diseases, good for building a pedigree for a young scientist. They have some very good resources for pathology and genetics, and for a small institute, the scientific facilities were excellent. Pay was reasonable, but middle of the road. The health care package was excellent, medical care at the Mayo Clinic top notch. Most staffers are nice, happy people, good to work wtih; handling of administrative matters is typically very efficient. Mayo Clinic is only about 15 minutes from the beach, so this made it nice to get away after a hard day at work.
Cons
There are a number of serious issues with make me hesitant to encourage a young scientist, interested in academic research, to consider working in the basic research institutes at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, especially if they have a family and want a long-term appointment there. The Birdsall institute started to lose its scientific luster around 2005, with the loss of most of top notch research scientists between 2005-2010; this has left behind a shell of junior investigators and less active senior investigators. The star investigators have left for a variety of reasons, but all within the last 5 years. To top all of this off, Mayo has not been able to replace the lost staff with people of equal quality, in part because of financial cutbacks and reduced hiring incentives, but also because this insititute is quite remote; no one wants to live there. The nearest research institute of similar quality is over 90 minutes away in Gainesville. Although branded as academic research environment, if you are a newly minted Ph.D. looking for a comfortable university environment where you can dress down, let it all hang out, and personalize your work space, forget about it here. Mayo makes no bones about being a corporation; they make it absolutely clear that you are part of their (corporate) Family, and expect you to adhere to all of their guidelines, ranging from dress code (one widely made fun of bulletin urged all employees to wear "color coordinated underwear") to what you can put on your desk ("No plants, family pictures, or personal items of any kind, please. We are a corporation, people, let's keep it professional.") As an employee, you will be underpaid and overworked; and you get no retirement benefits whatsoever as a low level employee. If you manage to hang on for 5 years in a staff position, you become vested. (However, time spent as a postdoc is not counted toward a staff position, however; it is only after you get an academic appointment that the clock starts ticking, so you might end up with retirement benefits 7-9 years after you start working there, if you are even favored with a promotion to an instructor.) As a research institute within Mayo, there are a lot of soft-money positions, and PIs push most of their staff very hard; I have heard the environment likened to a "high-pressure boiler." A typical work week is 55-60 hours for a postdoc, accompanied by high pressure to get in there and produce from the PI. Firing can be at will, so make sure that you don't screw up on the job or over annoy your supervisors. Looking at all of the issues, the biggest failing of the Mayo remains the laughable promotion and management structure that is peculiar to the Institute. Management seems to be a fiefdom model (PIs are the kings, postdocs knights, and everyone else are lowly serfs), and you were expected to behave according to your station. As a new hire, If you are looking for a equitable academic meritocracy where you will be rewarded for your hard work and great ideas, or at least acknowledged here, let me disabuse you from your illusions about this right now. Of course, not everyone behaves disreputably, but there are enough bad apples in this bunch to spoil this environment for everyone else. Although Mayo promotes itself as a meritocracy, when I worked there this was clearly not the case, and it was sad to see so many promising young scientists ground down by the unforgiving environment. Job promotion and prospects at Birdsall are governed by the recommendations of a self-appointed cabal of principal investigators who had a vested interest in subsuming power (a power clique) , most of whom have been promoted from within, some on their own merits, many not. The better faculty stayed out of this little power block, but it was a distressing experience to see this grow like a cancer within the Institute. One thing that became clear was that favoritism and nepotism, rather than merits of the candidates, were the driver for the promotion of certain individuals. Consequently, well-liked minted people could rise quickly through the ranks, while others who were not blessed by their betters would get stuck early in the process, with no hope of advancement. How far your could you go up the ladder was only modestly correlated with your productivity. Your job prospects depended upon who was cheer-leading you. And finally, one other point about Mayo's promotion progress is there hidden requirement that you need to be an MD to be in upper management; the MDs who run the place don't care much at all about research (it's not a big driver of incoming dollars, their bottom line), and have been cutting the financial underpinnings of this for the last 10 years. If you are a lowly academic, with merely a Ph.D., and you are looking for a management position, you won't go very far; nearly all of the long-term senior management have MDs, so the odds are stacked against you if you as a basic scientist.
