Duke University Health System – “Soft money jobs are unstable and unprotected”

Pros

Great benefits for FT salaried employees if you don't get paid on grants.

Great opportunities to brown-nose because Duke is so politically-oriented.

Cons

Soft money employees are treated like second-class citizens (or more like contract workers). 30 days notice is all you may get . No internal support exists for you to move laterally or to help you find a job. These changes have come about over the past 6 years por so. So build your network and brown-nose all you can.

Very little support for cross-training. Each department must pay for this service and that cost is not liked by the business managers.

All hirings are currently frozen at Big Duke. 100 people are about to get their severance offerings. The company picnic was scrapped last year for the first time ever.

Don't expect to get by on your merit. You need to be well-liked.

I was a FT employee, working my way up the tech ladder for 18 years, finding basically no opportunity to move sideways or up. I got laid off twice within a 2-year period because of mismanagement of funds and lack of the ability for finaqnce to release research money because they were busy shoring up finds for their own staff. That is probably illegal. That doesn't matter at Duke. Fair warning.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop making the MDs managers. They don't have the skill sets. Allow more visibility and acountability. Bad surgeons need to be dismissed,even if they bring in the paying customers. The code of silence needs to end.