VTT Reviews

Cons

nothing, I really enjoyed it there

Cons

Bureaucratic and rigid organization, poor career development opportunities, low salary.

Cons

Low prospects of increasing salary with increasing responsibilities.

Cons

No perks and benefits, no recognition, glass ceiling, horizontal growth (more tasks) without rewards, low salary compared to the private sector, old contingent - no fun, even though they try to build some communities for young professionals.
If you found some mistakes or have ideas on how to improve the current mode of work, be ready to be told to shut up, be called stupid or any other reaction just to keep the things in the old fashion because there are dinosaurs who don't want to have changes (probably just being lazy or I don't know).

Cons

Pay has stagnated for last 10 years or so. Personal pay has nothing to do with your skills or contributions. Idle a project doing nothing, or do world-class research and results, no-one cares. New hires have been frozen for years, so no new blood, no new energy, no fresh ideas to stir it up with some rebel feeling. Old geezers clubs keep each other hired regardless of research skill over any layoffs. A good researcher in a core subject is not valued whatsoever. You have to be acquiring funding to be something. Over the years, most capable people have left and what remains is mostly those who know they are better of staying and biding it till retirement.

Still, the potential is great, and it was actually great a few years back. Hope it will get there someday still.

Cons

A large company with typical problems with internal communications. Not a strong feedback culture. Orientation of new employees can vary in quality.

Cons

Haven't experienced any cons yet

Cons

-Communication is sometimes poor and strategic direction is missing
-Too many fragmented and isolated projects
-Lack of leadership
-At the moment government funding for R&D is being reduced which makes it challenging to find project funding

Cons

Strategy is lost. Are you a reserch institute, a subsitute to university or a collaborative institute linking industry to research world?
Management style fromstone age: day by day more regulations, less and less freedom to even think.

Cons

It was generally difficult to define a clear line between contract research and academic research within the organisation ... you can do either one or the other.

However, if you want an academic career, VTT is not a good place, in particular after the revisions done in 2015 to the structure (now a non-profit company or OY; whatever that means in practice remains to be seen). Now, this is hardly the place to conduct research that leads to higher impact publications; if this is your goal... go elsewhere.

Research portfolio has been re-arranged several times during my time, and often changed on short or literally, no notice at all. The reasons for such decisions were also usually not communicated in any way.

By far the worst experience, therefore, relates to the management. It lacks any clear line of development, consistency; shows poor long-term vision, and was constantly shifting focus ... projects were constantly tossed around or terminated prematurely for reasons that often remained obscure.

Communication between management and employees was the worst I have ever experienced in any organization. There was simply no interest, it seemed, to properly communicate with those "below" within the line management, and no emails nor phone calls were answered. This also shows a strong degree of disrespect to employees.

Most importantly, for the economic welfare of the organization: Important decisions were simply not made or not communicated timely - when it would have been strategically smart to react quickly.

It remained often unclear what exactly was the case or what may have been the reasons behinds such non-decisions ??? Simple procrastination, indecision, lack of interest ? It will remain a mystery to me.