Duke University Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Duke University full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Duke has great flexible schedules. Mostly because there are very little deadlines that need to be kept.

Cons – Extremely poor leadership in Information Technology. Managers have moved up the ladder simply by politics and not by merit. They care little for their staff and are rarely seen.

Advice to Senior Management – The Administration really needs overahaul its functional support areas. The university standards are so low and are so far behind the times. A total reevaluation of the staffing model should be considered for more efficiency, better talent, happier employees, and cost effectiveness

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Duke University full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Work-life balance and benefits are very good

Cons – Terrible management, inefficient, unproductive; Duke doesn't pay for you to take courses there as you would expect as a staff member; Linda.com is not adequate training for the IT department- need to invest much more in real classes and training; too political; soul-draining; siloed work; duplicate work being done, with competitiveness, secrecy, and hatred between many groups in the same department; I lost 50 IQ points and developed depression from being on staff for several years.

Advice to Senior Management – Duke University continues to thrive because of its research, great faculty, its reputation, a great basketball coach/program, and the elitist parents that pay full-price for their children to attend. But, in many parts of Duke, staff are ridiculously poorly managed, inefficient, and unproductive. The ethnicity in its human resources department makes up for lack of diversity in the rest of the staff, but it isn't diversity if HR and other specific departments are primarily one ethnicity and other departments are of others. And morale is terrible. It is a political, deadbeat environment where I could hear my mind and skills atrophying. Management and culture must change. Don't give 5 year tenures to those in C-level positions that don't manage because they aren't even in the building 95% of the time. Don't pay people for two or more jobs and give them empty offices, especially not at C-level positions or in senior management. Everyone expects higher-ed institutions, especially Ivy+ like Duke, to be filled with bright staff and working with bleeding edge best technologies. Make it happen, and stop depending on the rich kids, stocks, sports, and research to pay your inflated bills for inadequate work from staff and management. Stop duplicating work within the same department and foster working together rather than competing with each other. The only fun staff ever had is for a short amount of time where they left work early and drank the rest of the afternoon.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Duke University full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Flexible with schedule and family life.

Cons – uneducated managers, confused direction, horrible business

Advice to Senior Management – Fire management

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Duke University full-time for less than a year

Pros – kind of famous university, that is all

Cons – almost everything, high pressure, not job opportunity, low salary

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Duke University

Pros – The work study. It has a good opportunity for students to work while in school.

Cons – Administration is horrendous. Opportunities are few and far in between. There is much control and little distribution of funds to where they should be.

Former Employee – worked at Duke University

Pros – Tuition assistance. Benefits are good

Cons – Poorly managed department. Managers have favorites.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn how to manage people properly.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Duke University

Pros – Great benefits and work/life balance.

Cons – No raise for 2nd year in a row. No room for promotion. No room for growth. Management have no respect for their staff. Unless you have your MD or PH.D. you are treated like you are nobody.

Advice to Senior Management – Management needs to change and start having more respect for their employees. Some managers should be fired for their incompentants although that is highly unlikely.

Current Employee – been working at Duke University

Pros – The benefits are good and, depending on the department you work in, the work can be more stable than the private sector.

Cons – Duke is decentralized, so there's no consistency in accountability and management. Central HR and administrators more or less let different units and departmental heads and managers "do their own thing", so often getting ahead depends more on who you know that what you've accomplished. Units and departments don't talk to each other and often compete for attention and funding. It's a rather negative and confrontational atmosphere with no accountability for senior management.

Advice to Senior Management – I'm not sure much could really improve the culture except for significant changes in management and leadership that would significantly take the university out of the fifty-year old internal politics it's mired in.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Duke University full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Taught me to work more independently and rely on myself.

Cons – Terrible administration. They made life very difficult. Ranomly will lose your insurance, or not get paid one month, or lose an opportunity because someone failed to compltete a form on time. I wish it was an irregular occurrance, but it's not. It happens to everyone.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire detail-oriented people. Educate them on how to do their job properly, and have consequences for them if they fail. This university has a name to uphold, and it will lose that standing if it doesn't start cari g for its employees through better administation.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Duke University full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Good benefits and health care

Cons – Salary was very bad when I started and only became reasonable just before I left. The politics became awful. Worked insane number of hours.

Advice to Senior Management – You should value your staff as much as the professors, researchers and senior management. Do not make prejudgements about people and situations, or allow managers to make them political pawns; you lose good staff that way.