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Stanford University

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The university within the university. - Anonymous employee Stanford University Employee Review

1.0
Sep 19, 2009
Anonymous employee
Recommend
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Pros

You help to educate about 40,000 K-7 students in Mathmatics. Many of the older employees care very much about this and have become quite qualified over the years. They're "true believers" in education, and if you're one too, you'll have plenty of friends. Central Stanford has good benefits, organization, and training oppourtunities. Thanks to a brilliant head of programming, the technologies running the software that students and teachers use is quite sophisticated. It's a good place to learn many technologies if you're an engineer, though you'll have to deal with a lot of legacy.

Cons

Salaries are only about 60% of what similar positions are payed within other departments of the university. Salaries are dramatically low, which leads to high turnover and an inability to fill desperately needed positions, often for half a year or more, since almost no one is willing to work for so little. Often offices and promotions that properly belong with more far more experienced people who have been at the company for many years are lost as perks to attract people into new positions. A middle-management layer was recently introduced as the group got larger, however these were a mixed bag mostly from much larger companies and most of their styles clash badly with the software / process we actually have. Differing opinions of how to proceed on projects were hard enough to reconcile years ago, and the clash has exacerbated that. There's definitely a lot of cultural shear as the older academics and engineers are being displaced and driven away by generic non-technical business people. The software and processes have a technical complexity at this point that's beyond the technical understanding of the head of the organization, almost all of the middle management, and about two-thirds of the ground-level employees.

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5.0
Jun 10, 2026
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Pros

Very collaborative smart people. The place to go for AI training.

Cons

Professors can be very busy

1.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The weather at best. I can't say much more. It is a great place to go if you are a sociopath that wants to make a lot of money and meet fellow Patrick Bateman types.

Cons

A toxic working environment. Situated in a very difficult to navigate suburban environment. Very little social life for young students and professionals. Very little soul. People here are self, rather than group oriented. Corruption is rampant, especially among the professors; famously this even includes our former president.

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