Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Employee Reviews about "management"

Pros

Mission. Intellectual capacity/desire to do good of staff

Cons

Overly political and hierarchical management culture

Pros

Without doubt, BMGF is a place that can do so much good. It has nearly unlimited resources to change the world and make it a better place. The mission is inspiring. The employee benefits are very good, health insurance, 401k contributions and leave surpass your typical job anyday.

Cons

It is a pity that BMGF management and work culture suck (pardon the language). There is continuous change with strategy processes that do not make much sense. Senior management egos drive the organization. There is no rules based process, even critical functions like HR are subject to whims of program leaders. As there is no independent Board, such practices flourish. Superior subject matter experts, like a former family pl director, are summarily fired and replaced with management stooges like former HR professionals with no background in the subject. It is a pitiful state of affairs and what is even more pitiful is that leadership at CEO level does not take notice or rectify the situation.

Pros

Benefits are great, if you click with your team it is a great community.

Cons

HR and management training could use some improvement especially compared to companies that put more time and emphasis and money on training their managers. However, if on the right team it does help!

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 is incredible and there are a lot of smart people working hard to achieve it Amazing campus and great benefits Work/life balance can be great for many who take advantage of the "flexible work styles" For geeks you will have all the Micorosft latest and greatest at yuor disposal

Cons

For anyone in IT it is a disfunctional and ineffective organization. The CEO is a very smart and capable man but is very introverted and his focus his up the organization. This is a huge problem as his 'leadership' team are incompetant and lack even basic management skills. Their traits range from basic immaturity to emotionally unstable; there is also a 'boys club' whose behaviour is oftern very inappropriate. The result of this lack of leadership is spinning at the lower levels; no clear strategy, inablility to make simple decisions effectilvely and worst of all a huge waste of foundation resources.

Pros

The mIddle- and low-level employees that actually get the day-to-day work done are amazing individuals. Some of the smartest, most compassionate people I've ever met. Great benefits package (5 stars). Salaries are good for those coming from the non-profit world, but no where near where they need to be for the level of work that's being done (1 star).

Cons

Leadership is not interested in employee development whatsoever. They say that each person has a budget allowance for it each year, but in 8 years, none of my requests were ever approved. Management is more interested in paying BIG BIG bucks to McKinsey and the like instead of developing their own talent. Good employees are used and abused and then unceremoniously let go when their positions have been 'phased out' due to yet another reorganization.

Pros

Nice place to work in Pakistan

Cons

Local management is not capable

Pros

Excellent place to work if you are passionate about solving complex issues. There are plenty of opportunities to lead, learn and grow, despite the flat structure. The overall organization promotes work life/balance and have many policies to support employees.

Cons

Constant sea of change at all levels - staff, managers, systems, etc. Managers often have great content expertise but lack management experience which can make the work challenging. In addition, your relationship with your manager will impact how much you can balance your work.

Pros

It's a tremendous honor to work on behalf of such a good mission and a pleasure to work alongside so many smart, dedicated people. The building is beautiful, the benefits are fantastic and the travel opportunities are one of a kind.

Cons

It is incredibly bureaucratic and extremely poorly led at the senior management level. It is far too difficult to get work done. We spend more time talking to each other via powerpoint than focusing on external recipients. Reorganizations are so frequent, it is a long-running internal joke. Most of the leaders who are instituting these reorganization decisions don't know the work because they haven't been there long. Inevitably, these architects leave in two years and the process starts all over again. It's exhausting.

Pros

The team was incredibly passionate, warm, and built a strong sense of community.

Cons

Management could have done a better job establishing career development opportunities and goal setting with assistants.