Population Services International Employee Reviews about "great people"

Pros

Great people, owners are always there

Cons

Drama, training period too long

Pros

Great people Interesting mix of NGO and private sector approaches

Cons

Not very good at telling its own story Tendency to understaff projects Some departments funded through overhead that do little to help with the mission

Pros

-There are some really great people at PSI that actually care about its mission but you can find that at ANY job. It’s an NGO, they all regurgitate the same work. -There’s usually leftover food which you’ll need since your salary won’t cover cost of living as they keep you pretty close to the poverty line. -You learn by doing…. If you’re into baptism by hell fire. Seriously, there is no training for anything. Not even for your own job.

Cons

-Pay is terrible. PSI will proudly say they pay in the “50%” market rate (which is false, & HR will remain silent when you call them out on it) yet they expect the brightest ideas & their staff to work overtime (unpaid, even non-exempt folks) & sometimes during holidays. As someone who thought PSI was a great place nearly four years ago, I can promise you that the low pay is not worth anything you’ll have to go through here. I can’t wait to get out. -The terrible management here is rampant & spreads like black mold in a humid, dark room. PSI will throw anyone into a supervisory role yet there’s no training for said “managers” so really what we have are super-delegators who will rather push things off down a chain of several people until it gets done by some random intern or undermine you at every turn. If you’re lucky, you get a manager that genuinely wants you to grow with the team & with the company. Actually you won’t because they all left, sorry! - Recently, PSI just made pretty much all the directors into Vice Presidents for no good reason. Yet the middle management and juniors are constantly overlooked and overworked. You have junior staff working 2-3 jobs and middle management fighting to negotiate for $2,000. Every quarter revenue is down, there was some crappy excuse for ppl NOT getting bonuses this year (which is barely a few hundred bucks), people paid at the minimum salary band, etc yet these new VPs are making top dollar & bringing in literally NO funding. Projects are closing up every month. You know who brings in funding? The technical advisors and middle management writing all the proposals, not the directors who throw a signature on it & call it a day. Projects closing left & right, departments merging bc they don’t have enough funding to exist on their own, yet you needed new VPs?? Meanwhile we just got a new chief of HR after MONTHS. - You can’t do a review of your manager but they’re required to do one for you. Which means if you have a great manager they don’t get their praise but if you have a terrible one you basically have to sit there & deal with it. If you’re going to report bullying make sure you have another job lined up or a body-camera on because HR does nothing about retaliation except tell you to leave if you don’t like it. Higher ups will see it & turn a blind eye to “not get involved”. - Speaking of HR… HR is SPRINTING out the door & no one knows why. They have the highest turnover which is a topic for gossip & anxiety because if HR keeps leaving something must be seriously wrong… right? Everyone keeps wondering when’s the best time to jump ship because the turnover rate is out of control. Every week is 2-3 emails about people leaving & now it’s to the point where people are leaving without a job lined up for their own sanity. - Supervisor to supervisee bullying is strong here & nothing gets done about it. HR will twiddle their thumbs, but if the bully/supervisor is close with their own manager then you might as well find a new job because either 1) nothing will change & you’ll be more miserable & retaliated against or 2) you’re “suddenly” placed on a performance improvement plan which is codeword for “resign now or be fired”. I’ve never seen a person on a PIP who wasn’t out the door within 2 weeks & it’s always been because of manager ego. - This organization is not a place for people of color. There’s 2 or 3 tokens per department (except Franco department) and sometimes none in a whole team. It’s terrible that 95% of HQ looks nothing like the countries/people they serve or their in-country staff. Those tokens do not get the same opportunities or pay, & once you get past junior/ midmanagement level, you barely see them. The micro-aggressions here are blatant. Black, Latinx & Asian employees get “mistaken” for themselves almost daily. Some HQ employees have even gone as far as to address in-country staff as “those kinds of people” with apparent disdain & discomfort, yet have no problem posting 1000 white savior photos to social media about how they “taught the ppl of Asia/Africa”. On phone calls you can hear expats berating & actually yelling at their staff but these staff members are unable to report due to fear of losing their jobs. - For an organization that has offices in developing countries & regularly sends staff there, you’d think they’d at least have a training for race/diversity/culture relations but no. HQ staff & expats insult in-country staff to their faces & belittle them. The stupid “ethicspoint” is useless. I myself have used it 4 times & nothing came of it. - Work-life balance is a myth. You can go on vacation but people will still email you every day as if you’re still in the office & expect you to respond. We are paid NGO MONEY which is damn near equivalent to monopoly money so readjust your expectations. Or ask your new VPs to pull their weight. - Your professional growth is 100% dependent on 1 your manager, 2 if that person likes you & 3 where THEY want you to grow. Unless you have one of the good managers, you have to leave PSI to get to where you want to be. - Internal equity for salaries is one of the biggest lies this organization tells. If your boss isn’t ready to fight HR round for round with you then too bad. If you’re not super vocal & ready to raise hell, too bad. It's written in the comments of the culture survery too. They did a gender pay assessment and apparently women & men have equal pay here but what did you expect in an organization that is 98.6% women?!?! I’ve heard my coworkers of color mention that they know they make less than others as well. - We did a random exercise where everyone anonymously wrote their feedback. Most people had the same issues I'm listing here and C-Suite basically told us all that we don't know what we're talking about - Turnover is high, morale is so low that new hires who have been here under 9 months are already applying elsewhere. - Your degree means nothing, use it at an organization that will value it. You have MAs & returned peace corp volunteers as interns & BAs as Sr. Program Managers making double the salary. - If you’re looking to come to PSI bc you want to go to the field then that’s a BIG joke (I told you they write themselves). It will take years of brown nosing to even get a short term stint. What did you think this was, an actually international NGO? PSI in the intl dev space is a joke. We put out no real thought and are rarely at the table with other reputable NGOs. We also tell new hires that they'll have opportunities to go to the field but it's a lie to attract people. - PSI doesn’t value its employees. Favoritism is their middle name if you aren’t a favorite, you’re getting nowhere. Every other review for the company for YEARS says this same thing. PSI doesn’t value you if you stay, they value you when you leave. So many good people have left In just the past 3 months alone. - The saddest part. I’ve heard from friends at two other NGOs that our staff in the field sometimes refer to PSI as colonizers because of how the expats treat them. How disgraceful! - If you still decide to work here after reading all these reviews then you have no one to blame but yourself. You're honestly better off unemployed or bartending (you'd make more too).

Pros

When you leave PSI and go elsewhere, you re-discover that they are one of the stronger, more focused NGOs in the public health space. They are smart, impatient for health impact, driven, and creative. They attract really great people, and for the most part manage to keep them. More than their competitors, they put their focus and energy on their field programs, and try to make their systems and oversight nimble and efficient. Most people love working at PSI, and many who leave still love it in the diaspora. PSI was a great place to work, and I miss it!

Cons

Some upper level management issues they need to fix.

Pros

Great mission and lofty goals

Cons

Where do i start, I worked for PSI for over 5 years in different roles and location however it ultimately boils down to one thing. Who do you know and who likes or dislikes you. This organisation is basically mean girls in adult form with the ''popular kids'' getting all the shine and praise no matter their performance, if you are not part of this hallowed group forget career advancement and be prepared to be treated shabbily constantly. On the surface it looks like a great place with good people but once you peel back the surface it is a literal nightmare. Apart from having to deal with groupthink and look at the profile of the senior staff in all locations and it is clear the specific type of person PSI seems to advance.

Pros

PSI is a great place to work, where a lot of diverse people come together and pool their talents. It’s been one of the most positive and productive places I’ve had the opportunity of working at.

Cons

Inflexible human resource policies. No vacation or sick days for temporary employees.

Pros

Great people - staff get along very well. Tools and processes - have many tools to build on your expertise

Cons

They need a better pay and benefits package

Pros

There is some room here to bring ideas and run with projects. There are also resources to back you up... from being able to tap into a global network, to attend trainings or conferences. That makes me feel like I have room to grow here and want to stay for awhile. I've learned a ton in my time at PSI -- from specific skills in my area of specialty broader trends in international development. The people are great and I spend lots of time at work laughing with my team. It is a very diverse place to work, with people from around the world and varied professional backgrounds. That might just be my favorite part of working here.

Cons

1 - PSI has reached middle aged in its organizational history. Our budget is facing a down swing, there are tons of "working groups" working on who knows what, and there are meetings about meetings. 2 - Salary and career growth are other sticking points here. Recruiters will likely lowball you during negotiations, so be prepared to take your time and stick to your guns to get paid what you want or deserve. 3 - There is an edge to some people within PSI's culture that is biting. A few people have a tendency to show off how tough and unlike other touchy-feely development orgs they are by acting like jerks. It's unnecessary and demotivating.

Pros

Great people to work with. It's a well established NGO. Good benefits and amazing flexible schedules. Year-long summer Fridays and accommodating to travel.

Cons

Not good leadership or structure. Systems are very inefficient and overly complicated. Poor intra-departmental collaboration. Everything feels like a mess most of the time. Lots of work, that is almost always deemed urgent. Not all managers know what they're doing. They will often say they want to help you grow but the budgets won't allow for it.

Pros

Nice people and great projects.

Cons

They can be tough negotiators.