UC Berkeley Reviews

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley

Pros – Nice place to live, fun city

Cons – Highly disorganized, poorly managed. Not a good environment for training or mentorship. Burdened with paperwork, detracts from accomplishing job.

Advice to Senior Management – The right hand doesn't seem to know what the left is doing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley part-time for less than a year

Pros – You want to be a GSI.

Cons – Lots of manual labor in front of the computer.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at UC Berkeley

Pros – Great work life balance and benefits. Work life balance was achievable because staff had very few expectations placed on them.

Cons – Leadership was autocratic. There was a false sense of collaboration, but decisions were made before anyone discussed them.

Advice to Senior Management – Get some leadership training and and be real.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley

Pros – Lots of good energy on campus. Just a place you want to be.

Cons – Bureaucracy. Parking. Bottlenecks at SPO.

Advice to Senior Management – They have a tough job. Don't chase the in state undergrad population away.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley

Pros – Being part of a system that can help the Bay Area and in many cases the world a better place.

Cons – Low pay and years of no raises or cut backs.
Continuing to foster an Us vs. Them mentality between Faculty/Upper Management and staff.
System rife with favoratism within departments. Friends helping friends. Some carrying a huge workload and others barely have work to do.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop acting like what staff does can be done better by trained chimps. What we do is not easy add dealing with HUGE egos of faculty without calling them on it daily takes a skill set. You get what you pay for, once the current crop of dinosaurs is gone..me included your in for a rude awakening.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at UC Berkeley

Pros – -Great if you want to squeeze by with doing the bare minimum.
-Great if you want to stay a long time and have a stable income, but do not have ambitions to advance.
-Academic environment, if you like to attend lectures and frequent libraries
-Can be fun if you like to work with students

Cons – -Raises are given out equally, regardless of performance
-Cannot get fired, ever. This can be great if you want to do the bare minimum, but also means the ambitious employees leave for the corporate world. This means you'll be working with a lot of people who have been around for a long time, and are either there because they need something stable but not too challenging, or because they like doing the bare minimum without retribution. It can be very frustrating to get results from colleagues.
-Getting anything innovative done will be slow and blocked at every level. Berkeley is big, bureaucratic, and thinks it's the best university in the world (even if other's don't agree). There's no motivation to change.
-Middle managers and exempt employees get away with almost anything, including sometimes 4 hour workdays or taking vacations even at the busiest of times.
-Union employees can basically do whatever they want past probation because of the well-meaning laws in place to [overly] protect workers.
Upper management, in my experience, is reasoned but detached from the reality of what happens in their units. Most are professors, some of whom have gone straight through the Ph.D. track without ever working an administrative job.
-Very little staff development. No tuition reimbursement or ability to take classes like at other universities.

Advice to Senior Management – -Don't be inept and make decisions on a whim without communication to employees.
-Don't be afraid to speak to employees for poor behavior.
-Do 360 performance reviews, and investigate beyond what middle management touts their department to be

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good benefits, great students, great to work in the heart of the East Bay. Decent job security, and a wide variety of workshops and resources staff can use to enhance resumes.

Cons – A major downside to the job security at UC Berkeley is that many people do not leave. And many people who work here are no longer the most qualified candidates for their positions. The school lacks a focus on rising to the times, and so there is no urge to develop these veteran employees further. This leaves little room for ambitious newcomers to rise up on the food chain. Additionally, comparatively low wages continued to lower the staff morale. Many staff members have just checked out completely. There are no carrots, as bonuses have been frozen. There are no sticks, as it seems nearly impossible to lay off employees who are not fulfilling their job descriptions. It is very difficult for someone who wants to rise, succeed, and make a difference to work to their full potential and not feel like a chump.

Advice to Senior Management – Start pulling out the weeds to create a more productive and efficient work environment for people who are being paid a lesser salary, but have so much untapped and unused potential.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Used to be a very relaxed and friendly place. You could have flexible hours, wear tshirts to work and all anyone cared about was that you got your work done. Work/Life balance was considered important. Vacations were not begrudged. You had someone to back you up & help w/ work.

For anyone hired into a Career position before 2012/2013 depending on the changes -the retirement pension, benefit and all that are amazing. (LIFETIME Medical benefits if you retired). 3 weeks vacation and other perks.

It varied by departments but in most you could get training and learn new skills and move up and around - as long as you were smart and hard-working you could move up.

Cons – They're gutting the only things that made up for the lower-than-average pay. Retirement pension & benefits are being cut. People are being laid off & everyone left is expected to do the work of 2-3 people. There are very few Career jobs, they now hire people for 1-2 years so there is NO INVESTMENT by those people or longterm goals. There is NO respect for the workers from upper management. They consider all work done by staff to keep the university running as unimportant. EVERYONE is miserable & turnover is contant - anyone smart & not vested in the retirement plan is finding new jobs all the older dedicated hardworking people who have all the institutional knowledge are bailing out w/ early retirement. So you've only got the people who are "stuck" in the middle or who can't find jobs left.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop hiring former bankers & other managers from coporations to come in and try to turn a non-profit into some corporate monstrosity. Stop outsourcing jobs that are done by UCB employees to other companies (are you getting kickbacks?) Stop firing people and giving stipends & housing allownances to manager. Stop wetting your pants over anything labelled "OE" (Operational Excellence). Realize that centralizing services may tehcnially make them more "efficient", but consider that QUALITY will be near zero in this model. Stop treating staff like they are nothing but "Human Capital" that is easily replacable. Respect the dedication and hard work of staff.

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

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Plenty of freedom to work your own hours and execute your own ideas. Other grad students and post-docs are really nice. The bay area is a great place to live.

Cons – PI is hands-off to the point of negligence. There is no pressure to generate results, which might sound great initially, but instead yields an environment where the only people that care about progress are the grad students and post-docs. Projects are poorly thought through and there is no overlap between projects, so lab members have to invent their own route to success using whatever means they can find from outside the lab. No lab manager. Money is spent on frivolous and duplicate supplies and then is unavailable for desperately needed purchases. PI is absolutely unwilling to help with the job search.

Advice to Senior Management – Retire.

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

Current Employee – been working at UC Berkeley

Pros – Good intellectual environment for growth

Cons – Faculty lack respect for staff

Advice to Senior Management – Support personnel lack respect for University mission, which is reflected in disparities in pay and management approaches. Faculty reign supreme although only modestly competent.