Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Employee Reviews about "campus"

Pros

The benefits package is great and comprehensive. New campus is beautiful and gives an appearance of transparency. Location near Space Needle is a bonus.

Cons

No understanding of the difference between leadership and managing/supervising. Non liberal/democrats will be shunned -- in the most passive/agressive manner possible, as this is predominant personality trait at foundation. High-school cliques, bad-behavior, gossip and mis-information determine one's perceived value, as senior-most managers take and any bits of information to churn out what they later call "performance reveiws". HR exists to protect upper management, period. No ability for this entity to assess, resolve, mentor, guide or direct employees that don't see eye to eye to resolution.

Pros

Great location. Awesome new campus with plenty of windows and work space. Good equipment and furniture to work with. Good management, friendly, hands-off style.

Cons

If you are a contractor you will quickly feel left out in many events that take place at the foundation. If you are working as a contractor in IT you will not have a chance to get hired on full time but you will see many other departments converting contingent staff to full time.

Pros

- Positive mission statement, was started by people who's hearts were in the right place - Huge economic stimulus to the nonprofit and NGO sectors and the agencies/firms/consultants that support them - Get to meet and network with top leaders from the political, NGO, entertainment, and science worlds - Huge budgets: if you can dream it and marshal the political will behind it, you can do it - Generous retirement contributions - Can score a free lunch most days due to large number of lunchtime meetings - West coast office hours - everyone is gone by 5:30pm (but you will still have to work from home) - Nice new campus, they make it easy to bike to work even during the rainy months

Cons

The Bottom Line: You need to bring your political A-game if you want to survive here. The Organization: It's common to hear "this place is like a startup". It is in some ways. Unfortunately, the more positive aspects of startup culture are not represented here. In a startup people tend to rally behind the mission and all pull together to accomplish goals. Success is interdependent at a startup. Just the opposite is true at the foundation. It's very much a zero-sum game and success is not conceived of as being mutual. Turf wars abound between teams and within teams; struggling for attention/blessing from the highest levels of foundation leadership, funding for their projects, team headcount, and media coverage. This creates a lot of enmity between people and teams, the greatest casualties are the great ideas that never come to fruition and missed opportunities. Being a team player is not on anyone's annual goals. The organization is constantly reorganizing. This creates a lot of uncertainty for projects, issues and the people who work on them. Twelve to eighteen months between major reorganizations is about the norm, shorter for more minor reorgs. Leadership can't seem stick with one operating model long enough to thoroughly vet it before moving on to the next thing. "Top tier" management consulting companies have deeply embedded themselves at the foundation and attached themselves to influential leaders. These management consultants are very effective at triggering reorganizations which result in a big payday for them. The Leadership: The incentive is to "manage up" rather than manage across or down. Without a good boss/mentor/champion behind you, it's very difficult if not impossible to advance your career here. Very few people are lucky enough to find someone who wants to pull them up. There is little to no emphasis on working together better. After an internal analysis revealed a level of dissatisfaction around the culture and how people worked together, a senior leader was asked what was being done to improve the situation. This leader indicated to the staff that those are not the metrics that leadership is focused on. The Work: The public perception may be that the foundation is a fulfilling place to work because of all the good it does. The reality is quite different. The foundation is essentially a checkbook and as an everyday employee you are many layers away from the work being performed on the ground by sub-sub-sub-sub-contractors. Additionally, the foundation's grantees and vendors charge what is known as "Gates rates". Almost every request for funding or contract is significantly inflated. It's often disheartening to see so much of the budget be eaten up by inflated expenses. The foundation tends to work with the same set of "partners" who have become entrenched interests at the foundation. There's very little appetite or ability to solicit fresh new ideas from hungry, smaller partners. In the case of these large entrenched, and often highly entitled, partners, the relationships have become dysfunctional - more about the money than the good work. Strategy refreshes for issues are frequent, intense and can take upwards of 5 months to complete. This prevents the real work from being done on the ground. Supporting these strategy refreshes is another huge stream of money for "top tier" management consulting firms working at the foundation. The Coworkers: Cautionary tale: I got thrown under the bus on my third day of employment after being invited out for a "welcome lunch" by one of my peers. On the fourth day our group's Business Officer chewed me out because my lunch-mate from the previous day had reported me and intentionally misrepresented what I said. You never know who you can really trust. People from the northwest tend to be pretty frosty and passive aggressive, but the folks here take it to a whole new level. Feeling completely alone in a building of 800+ people was common. Unfortunately, the lower you are on the totem pole, the tougher it is. The lowest level employees, the Program Assistants and Program Coordinators have it the worst. The treatment they received from higher ups was often thoughtless as if they were lesser humans and sometimes bordered on abusive. Many people who are Senior Program Officers and above demand to be waited on hand and foot. Example: many of them don't know how or refuse to print their own documents. HR is completely ineffective. They will always take the side of the higher ranking employee. Staying out of the cross hairs of others is your best and probably only defense.

Pros

The mission (though for those who have spent their lives working at different mission-driven orgs it's not the only one out there with a great mission). No worry about fundraising or resources: the money is there. Lovely campus and great benefits. Some nice co-workers. Great door-opener and looks great on resume. Smart people. New CEO does seem to at least be raising the right questions though it is tough to change this place.

Cons

Exceptionally bad management. Frequent re-orgs. No mentorship, very little chance to move up. Employees are mostly unhappy and morale is awful. No transparency about decisions. Very old school top- down, passive aggressive Pacific NW culture, like MSFT or Amazon. Most people leave in about 3 years and those who stay have made survival their primary purpose. No one really challenges the founders and there is an aura of fear around "what would Bill say". For an organization that works mostly in developing countries or to improve poor public schools, there is very little diversity in staff and certainly in leadership.

Pros

Everyone can agree that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation does world changing work. I have worked there in two different capacities two different times in the last 9 years and the culture of highly competitive, extremely intelligent people remain. The company still operates as a young organization in that it embraces new ideas and it's always evolving. People who dislike change would not be happy here. The benefits can't be beat and the environment is stunning in the new campus. They encourage working from home and remote work, which is helpful in the sometimes intense and stressful office environment.

Cons

This is a company of academics, there is not a lot of silliness or fun happening at this organization, which makes sense due to the importance of their mission. There is a competitive feeling throughout the company that can feel oppressive, but they still embrance a sense of creativity and change. They constantly re-org often with little to no notice or reasoning behind the changes which is pretty jarring, so you have to be someone who can embrance change easily to thrive in this environment.

Pros

Great colleagues, great mission, great atmosphere and great benefits. Lots of interesting trainings and guest speakers available on campus

Cons

Always feel like the dumb one in the room, quite stressful and low pay for support positions. Managers not always trained in management skills. Limited advancement opportunities.

Pros

You get the opportunity to work with smart, passionate people to solve some of the world's biggest problems. Great 'campus' feel in Seattle--I felt proud walking in to work every day

Cons

Feels very siloed--at a big organization, hard for all the teams and departments to talk to each other. Also, some people seem kind of complacent in their roles; you might not necessarily get a fast-paced startup feel here at such a big, bureaucratic nonprofit, but it varies based on what team you're on.

Pros

Great new campus and bike lockers

Cons

1st year you will spend 70 hours per week working. The 2nd not much less. Support of management for consultants is more than the full time employees. Management support a mean culture that take people down. In most cases it is the full time employees that suffers the most. Not a good environment for the long term. If you have family don't work here.

Pros

Benefits are great. The Campus is beautiful.

Cons

No one seems to care where the buck stops. It is very silo'd and decisions are made in teams or departments and likely are duplicated elsewhere leading to overly complicated processes and waste.

Pros

The benefits are amazing. Campus is beautiful. You feel that you are a part of good work in the world.

Cons

It's an org full of Type-A workaholics. Your experience will vary wildly depending on whether your manager has the time and/or ability to manage their team.