UCLA Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Great benefits, discounts, Westwood shops and food. Learning opportunities abound.

Cons

Many bureaucratic layers to cut through makes processes inefficient. Hard to let go incompetent career staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Better intra- and inter- department communication and networking opportunities to integrate processes, share information, and lift staff morale.

Pros

Great support for flexible work schedule. Management was understanding with needing to work from home on occasion. Proximity to and interaction with the med school was really a bonus.

Cons

Job was great, but the facilities, both technical and mundane were pretty lousy. New computers were hard to come by, etc.

Pros

You get paid to practice leadership skills and plan programs. You get to make a difference in students' lives.

Cons

As an RA, you don't earn money, just room & board. Sometimes you have to deal with fire alarms and so forth.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to RAs; my fellow staff members had a lot of really good ideas and they wanted to feel like management was listening to them and considering their suggestions.

Pros

Good vacation, sick pay, benefits

Cons

There is no reward in working there. You are just glad you made it through the day.

Unless you are liked by the 'right' people, there is no chance for promotion or gain interesting assignments. The business unit does not promote or appreciate different view points. There is no incentive to produce. Everyone is too busy playing politics to do any actual work. Projects are seldom delivered on time.
he BRA manager is very controlling unless you are favored or male. I was once told I should tell my co-worker when I go to the bathroom so they would know where I was. I was also told what color to fill an Excel spreadsheet cell and how to format the document. I was told I am not to talk to other group's managers. I was critized for coming back from a meeting a few minutes late. I took the iniative to attend a class and was severely chastised for bein absent, for not getting approval.

There is no sharing of information, no team work mentality. Management lies and condone inappropriate and unprofessional behavior. Senior management waste money to feed their ego and fuel their self importance. The business unit can function better or same with half the staff currently employed. It is a good example of how public sector wastes valuable resources and funds. Their motto is to benefit the students on campus yet the students are required to jump through hoops to get parking. The business does not serve the campus well. The are their to stroke each other's ego. A complete overhaul would benefit the campus and the few good people that actually produce work results.

The work environment is clickish and Physcologically abusive.

Advice to Senior Management

Get over yourself. Your purpose is to serve the students on campus, not to sooth your own ego and abuse other just to feel superior. Find some other avenues to deal with your own insecurity.

Pros

You are likely to work with interesting Professors.

Cons

Like most graduate instructors, the work load is usually beyond the allotted hours.

Advice to Senior Management

You should be advocating for more funding to the state, not raising tuition costs and cutting salaries of those who are already most minimally paid. A "world-class education" should never be at the expense of the living wage of all employees of the UC System. To consider these ideas in opposition of one another is to fail to see your role of leadership, a great education is not mutually exclusive from a living wage for all the peoples employed who contribute to this ideal. How embarrassing for you Gene Block, cutting from the bottom.

Pros

Diverse faculty with broad knowledge

Cons

Student cubicles are old and need to be updated. IT infrastructure could be better.

Advice to Senior Management

n/A

Pros

1) Extremely relaxed, cooperative, and overall friendly environment
2) Coworkers are very endearing
3) The "customers" (students, scholars) are very polite most of the time

Cons

1) The pay is low (minimum wage)
2) In the fall quarter, paperwork is unbelievably immense (because it's the admissions season); similar case for summer, but notably less

Advice to Senior Management

The training for an office assistant was an outright overload of information, with a fairly high learning curve (there was just way too much to memorize, and it needed a lot of hands-on experience). You needed to memorize visa information, red tape processes, all the like -- very quickly.

Pros

The culture and people make it a great place to work

Cons

Lack of creativity and challenge

Advice to Senior Management

The leadship needs to be more honest and open mind

Pros

Great benefits. Good work/life balance (although this may depend on the department). Flexible hours. No micromanagement (again, this may very from department to department).

Cons

Very limited opportunity for professional growth in terms of career advancement. There are opportunities and resources to learn, take classes, etc. But moving up the corporate/institutional ladder is a hard and slow process. It's an environment where young, enthusiastic and motivated employees thrive. It's quite a bureaucratic place that resists changes. Lots of employees with 20-, 30-years of service that hold mid- and high-level management positions so the opportunities for growth are limited. The only way to advance a career without leaving UCLA is to move from one department to another.

Pros

Flexibility in offerings. Ability to propose new classes and being able to offer them quickly. For the most part, students are highly motivated, especially advanced students.

Cons

Marketing can sometimes be a bit weak, resulting in not enough students for a class to carry. Entry-level students sometimes don't have a clue as to what is expected at a college level.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you listen to instructors on suggestions for marketing. Keep being flexible with offerings, and thank you for being very supportive to instructors and to students.