Lack of Integrity - Anonymous employee Open Society Foundations Employee Review

Here's the thing you need to know about OSF: although it funds some of the most important progressive organizations in the world, OSF is not itself a progressive organization. There's a glaring lack of staff diversity. Fair workplace practices are a low priority. It can be an especially difficult environment for women and others who value a flexible, family-friendly workplace. Technically you are allowed flextime and can work from home; however it's granted at the discretion of your boss, so if your boss doesn't "believe" in it, you are out of luck. If you don't have a family that you like to spend time with or a life outside work, this could be the place for you. Most individuals are given the workload of 2-3 people, with which you can sink or swim. Managers often seem more interested in finding fault and assigning blame than with doing the real managerial work of genuinely helping staff succeed. As one colleague put it, "Never have I worked somewhere where the word 'team' was used with such frequency while having so little to do with the daily reality of the office environment." Senior staff are typically not promoted to management based on their ability to manage people, but rather because they for one reason or another happen to please their own higher-ups. There's no incentive for them to support or protect the people who report to them, and they receive little management training. Therefore management quality is wildly inconsistent across the organization--you can end up with a boss who is a micro-manager, or indifferent, or incompetent, or if you are lucky you may get one of the few who are decent. The environment lends itself to favoritism and cronyism. There's very little sense of shared mission. None of my bosses seemed to have any genuine convictions--outside of their own career advancement. If you have a conflict or grievance with your boss, there is no avenue of mediation or recourse save going to HR (who are useless) or getting a lawyer. HR policy decisions would not be out of place at a corporation that is downsizing. For example, employees' spouses were unceremoniously dumped off of the health insurance plan. Meaning, spouses are now forced to take the insurance of their own employer. This was a short-sighted decision, made with little evidence that it saves money (in fact it likely hurts the organization by making its benefits package less appealing to potential hires, and makes life just that much more difficult for employees). Merit raises were eliminated and replaced by cheap, erratically awarded year-end "bonuses." Bottom line: If you're considering working there, take a close look at who you'd be reporting to and whether the job expectations and benefits are realistic.