RAND reviews

-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.

While RAND has a number of benefits and will continue to attract talent, there are a number of significant challenges to working at RAND: - The "internal labor market" that creates very high levels of anxiety, stress, and frustration - Accurately highlighted (and substantial) problems in innovation, institutional agility, and diversity and inclusion - No slack in project budgets to innovate, learn new skills, or mentor - A cumbersome quality assurance (QA) process that means it takes two years for anything to get published RAND suffers from an extreme matrix organization and byzantine bureaucracy where an infinite number of people can say no but no one seems able to say yes (without consulting 20 other people). RAND also has some pretty substantial problems with its organizational culture. For one, its focus on researchers makes administrative staff and other non-research staff feel left out. The "kill what you eat" model of bringing in projects that dominates a lot of RAND also contributes to a Darwinian and cut-throat organizational culture, particularly in the DC office. (All those insanely bright, talented, motivated co-workers? They are often your competitors.) Speaking of competitors, life at RAND can seem like an endless and terrible competition. There is constant informal competition and jockeying to be on projects. There are also literally competitions for new research ideas and internal opportunities. While formally asking people to apply and reviewing all comers makes sense from a fairness point of view, it takes a huge amount of unpaid time and leaves you with the feeling that you are always pitted against others. After all this endless competition to bring in work or to be on project, the time slices can be very thin on projects. This means you work a lot of unpaid hours to do a good job, continue to be asked to work on projects within the internal labor market, or turn in work that doesn't meet your own standards. This challenge can be particularly acute for senior researchers, who get more expensive over time but then become too expensive to use on projects for more than a few days here and there. Cons to specific FFRDCs: - NDRI: no core funding + "eat what you kill" staffing model = something close to anarchy - PAF: it's hard to break into PAF; they have many good things, but they're not for you - Arroyo: in an increasingly abusive relationship with the Army - HSCOAC: micromanagement + DHS dysfunction = warnings from everyone not to work in HSCOAC, for the love of God save yourself