IHME Reviews

Pros

The working environment and salary are great

Cons

None that I can think of

Pros

If you want to work hard, learn a lot, and make an outsize impact, IHME is the place for you. IHME produces rigorous and novel analyses of vital health outcomes that provide a crucial evidence base for policy makers. Much of the research is produced at the subnational level, allowing for a much more nuanced understanding of health patterns, and therefore more targeted and effective interventions. Unlike other mission-driven organizations where the efficacy of the approach isn't always obvious, I've never doubted the utility of the work being done at IHME. IHME provides excellent technical training and can help you build a strong data and programming skillset. If you're interested in pivoting into tech or working at other top-notch mission-driven organizations (like the Gates Foundation), IHME is a great place to be. Also, the brand new building is absolutely beautiful.

Cons

The compensation is competitive relative to other NGO's and academic research. However, it's not competitive relative to other jobs that require a similar skillset and workload (or tech jobs in general). That being said, it's worth remembering that every dollar that goes to IHME is a dollar not spent elsewhere in global health. For higher pay, work in the private sector.

Pros

Smart and capable coworkers. Lots of compute power on premises.

Cons

Management hindered creative problem solving.

Pros

Relaxed working environment, was part of a team with very understanding managers, managers who were also willing to find opportunities for me to grow

Cons

There isn't a super clear pipeline on how to get promoted and what is needed to get there. Like all jobs, need to ask manager early on what is needed to get that promotion

Pros

Wonderful coworkers who are committed to high-quality work

Cons

Extremely slow pace for change and an incredibly top-down power structure

Pros

Great Work Life Balance Great Co-workers - passionate and driven about public health. Uses lots of innovative methods in the public sector - cluster computing, software, etc. Good for if you're worried that working in the public sector will shield you from innovative tech. Great Benefits - Generous PTO, Sick Leave, Many Medical Plans to choose from, great retirement benefits. This all applies from UW, as IHME lives under UW as a research institute.

Cons

Moving up/growing professionally at IHME is timegated - you must have a certain amount of experience, and a certain amount of time on IHME Glacier of knowledge - this relates to the previous topic above, but in order to grow professionally, there will come a point where you will need to have strong math skills to really understand the modeling that goes behind the scenes. This is not necessarily a con - just know that it's a big time investment if you don't have a strong math or statistical public health background Segmentation - there is work on this, but lots of teams on IHME don't necessarily communicate with one another. This leads to really cool/innovative methods being kept internally on teams. Breadth of knowledge - Again, this is changing - but you'll be expected to know the most basic data software to the newest things, e.g. stata, excel, to python machine learning. It's not necessarily a con, but you won't always be on the forefront of the coolest models - there's a lot of data cleaning and simple work that needs to be done.

Pros

Unionized, academic culture, great benefits, lots of little perks through university, engaging work, friendly/helpful coworkers

Cons

Unionized, academic culture, at times a struggle to maintain contracted working hours

Pros

Friendly and helpful people to work with

Cons

None everything seems very interesting

Pros

Work with some amazing colleagues and getting to know them

Cons

As much as HR promotes professional development, you are hardly spending the time that you should for professional development, which leads into getting way too comfortable in your current position without even considering moving up in the organization. Ever since the organization has been gaining attraction since the COVID pandemic, the deadlines are much sooner, which can create so much stress on the employees. Researchers are terrible in communicating with data professional on what it needs to be done and why, creating confusions. Data professionals perform most of the data extraction and manipulation, and for researchers to create confusion with the data professional. Not a good thing. Use this opportunity, but don't get comfortable with the organization. Use it as a tool to gain experiences, but not something to stay for long. As a former non-White employee, was not a complete fan of the implementation and promotion of DEI initiative. It's not exactly the anti-racism that we were looking for.

Pros

Great people, great teamwork, great opportunities for early career research

Cons

Work life balance is difficult