Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Nice facilities, including buildings, cafeterias, and library. Home to many experts in cancer research and epidemiology. Excellent seminar series.

Cons – Leadership does not truly care about junior researchers' development. Few opportunities for advancement to faculty level. Competitive environment; you are basically on your own. Institution grows by recruiting from outside, rather than developing its own talent. There is a lot of institutional politics--you need a bigshot patron to advance. Inadequate connections = sputtering career. A good place to train for a while, then leave.

Advice to Senior Management – Institution would be better served by growing talent from within; don't take your employees for granted.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Research/Scientific side seems brilliant, dedicated, and living out the healthy lifestyles they research. Some on the Administrative side are there, too.

Cons – Slow, inefficient, focus on protecting one's own job seems greater than improving the way work can be done

Advice to Senior Management – Say what you mean, mean what you say, then just do it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Pros – Noble mission.
Some wonderful and smart colleagues.
Benefit package above average.
Great South Lake Union location.
Newer facilities.
Good cafeteria.

Cons – Incompetent managers.
Politics. Politics. Politics.
Below average pay.
Nepotism.
Scientists hold a lot of power. They are focused on their research (as well as they should) but not interested or incapable of handling personnel and other issues.

Advice to Senior Management – Mandatory training for managers, specially in the area of emotional intelligence.

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Pros – The mission of the center is wonderful. Lots of smart people work here.

Cons – IT department has lost its soul. Most managers are from WAMU so it's very corporate now. Instead of collaborative, it's adversarial between departments now.

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Pros – Big institute with lots of investigators

Cons – low compensation. limited grant funding in labs

Advice to Senior Management – keep employees happy

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Pros – Fred Hutch has a good benefits system in place and is a great place to start if you want to get experience for med school or a PhD program.

Cons – Fred Hutchinson does not value it's Technicians, while it provides good benefits, it provides little to no salary increases and a very low starting pay. Principal Investigators are treated like gods, and can literally do no wrong. PIs are very smart in science, but have no training or understanding of their employees or of what their employees make. It is entirely up to the PI if a technician is published: some PI's are great, if you put in a large amount of work for the paper, your name will get on it. However many PIs refuse to put anyone on a paper unless they have PhD by their name, even if the person has worked on the entire project and assisted with writing the paper. If you have an issue with a PI you have no recourse but to quit.
Also, it is an unwritten law, which your lab manager will tell you after you've been hired, that you are expected to work overtime, but not get paid for it.
Also, due to the PI's ignorance of their finances I have had 2 different PI's offer Tech II positions, only to rescind it once the offer was accepted. One realized he didn't have the money to pay the higher salary, the other decided he wasn't sure he wanted to offer the tech II title.

Advice to Senior Management – PI's need mandatory management training. They need guidelines for treatment of their subordinates, and they need to be held accountable. I realize there are classes for the PIs to attend, but the worst offenders never do. This cannot be optional, someone needs to put their foot down and create and maintain a standard of treatment for employees.

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center full-time

Pros – I've read every single review here and there are truth in all of them. Thinking about working for Fred Hutch? I suggest you read all the reviews and form your own conclusion.

Relaxed atmosphere (depending on the job)
Good benefit package
Some good colleagues
Newer facilities
Liberal attitude
Good reputation

Cons – Low pay
Lack of career advancement
Politics
Horrible IT
Inept managers

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Pros – I love my coworkers. Some are just coasting for a paycheck but most IT workers, except management, are smart and hard working. It has been awesome to work with them. Work is very flexible and telecommuting is allowed as long as you get your work done on time. The Hutch IT department is constantly learning and deploying new technology and gears so learning opportunity is there.

Cons – Although the department says they promote from within, it is definitely not the case. A couple of my coworkers applied for an entry level management job and lost to another outside candidate that used to work at the boss' old company. It's peculiar that almost all the new management hires used to work with the boss.

My coworker and I have been working at the Hutch for 10+ years with glowing reviews each year, not that it automatically qualifies us for the job but we definitely don't feel we are any less qualified than the person hired; we have been told by several people the same thing as well. What's more hurtful was the reason they told us why we didn't get the job, which was complete bullsh**. We are all adults, just tell us the real reason please. I just wish I didn't waste my time going through the vigorous interviewing process which consists of 3 interviews and probably 6+ hours of my time.

The morale is really low right now with critical systems breaking often and blatant cronyism in hiring practice. Scientists are fuming and screaming at us for the bad and broken services we provide. I feel embarrassed to work at IT right now, we are not helping the Hutch's mission by helping the scientists do their jobs. Heck, with systems breaking left and right, we are impeding their research. We are hiring more supervisors and managers, not worker. It's getting to be a big bloated corporation like where the boss came from.

Advice to Senior Management – I really don't see any improvement with the current management in charge. The only hope is for things to get so bad that the C-level executives will wake up and realize what's going on.