MDRC Reviews

Pros

Wonderful coworkers; good work-life balance; collaborative over competitive; good mix of research and practice; many supportive senior staff to learn from and with; commitment to improving organization; great benefits

Cons

Progress with RCTs and government partners/funders can be very slow and bureaucratic; still working on some inefficient practices, like ineffectual meetings;

Pros

The people are generally wonderful to work with and are smart, mission-oriented, and driven. The New York office was a nice working environment in a good location. The projects are interesting and can offer travel opportunities.

Cons

It is very hard for junior staff to get promoted or be rewarded for their work. There is no transparency around how EOY performance evaluations are used for promotions and bonuses and senior management seem unwilling to consider promotions unless the employee has met certain time requirements, no matter how good the employee may be. It is also a very top-down organization, so unless you are a junior staffer willing to fight for more responsibility on projects, you may be stuck working on the boring administrative tasks indefinitely. Your experience is largely influenced by who you get as your supervisor.

Pros

There are a lot of passionate people at MDRC trying to make opportunities interesting work and make the culture better, even if change is very slow.

Cons

For research assistants and other junior staff, the experience is typically very stressful and patronizing. Research assistants are expected to "manage up" to senior staff which means that the pressures and responsibilities fall on the most junior people. Senior-level work is often off-loaded to assistants without the support to resources to help them to succeed or the recognition that they are working above their pay grade. The workplace culture is one of of toxic academia where only the voices of people in power with research accolades are heard.

Pros

Interesting projects, smart coworkers, managers are generally understanding, nice and flexible.

Cons

Slow periods and very intense periods, no real way to predict. Can be easy for research assistants to get stuck doing more boring administrative work for indefinite periods, but it is possible to advocate for yourself and request other types of work.