Still Grateful to be Here
Pros
I love the challenge of working on a range of projects, and that I get to work outside of my disciplinary specialty in truly interdisciplinary teams. I love the lack of micromanagement: the freedom to manage my own time, a very flat hierarchy, and responsibility to accomplish tasks without someone leaning over my shoulder. I also like my colleagues. There's a range of social skills/personalities here, but the vast majority are sincerely collegial and a pleasure to work with. I've been mentored by several more senior people, for which I'm grateful, and I've had a chance to interact with and try and help juniors here. I also get to teach in the graduate school, and that's very satisfying. While RAND doesn't have a lot of ethnic diversity (which likely reflects larger social and cultural conditions, not RAND hiring/management), I do like the gender diversity at RAND--there's no glass ceiling here. I also appreciate that merit is generally recognized. I was promoted to full scientist after 2 years, and I think that fairly reflected my contributions and potential here at RAND. I'm compensated and treated fairly overall by the institution, get to do meaningful work, and I feel a lot of loyalty to RAND.
Cons
-You have to find your own work (RAND's "internal labor market"). Basically you have to quickly create a network of people who know and trust you to contribute value to projects, and get booked for 230 days of labor each year. That can be stressful, and may favor social skills over competency. -There are small pockets of highly toxic people who get tolerated because they have contacts and bring in business (they "bring value to the institution in other ways" as one unit manager told me). That may be a deal with the devil, trading a short term gain for longer term harm to RAND. -The Washington office has run out of space (hiring a lot), and so people who aren't in their office a lot are getting kicked out, and will have to use hotel (ad hoc) office space. I think most of us understand this is a difficult problem, but the presentation and implementation have been bungled pretty badly and caused a lot of resentment. It's being framed as "We've done the research and kicking people out of offices who are in the office less often will make them interact with other staff more often." That's been met with eye-rolling to anger.
