Vantaggi
Decent benefits and flexible schedule (remote days). Enjoyable work experience with my immediate team and faculty.
Svantaggi
I have decided to leave my role at Duke due to the broken structure that has encouraged and promoted individuals into higher roles with unchecked authority which creates an impossible, often hostile, work environment. Duke has created a bureaucratic system that promotes low pay, mediocre work, and does not support staff performing the real day to day work. I know that university staff experiences vary department to department. Unfortunately, my specific experience was that business managers and higher up admin would bully, attack, and punish staff through email and in meetings (when there was no wrong doing), make decisions and create unnecessary policies at random to cover their own mistakes and restrict any small remaining staff autonomy, shoot down any and all requests, provide no support when needed, and much more. During my time at Duke, several staff submitted complaints to HR and, unfortunately, no significants changes were made and the working environment continued to decline. It was my experience HR are set-up to cater to higher up admin and are not available to or advocates for "lower level" employees.