Pros
Good work life balance before the pandemic
Cons
Glassdoor for BU There are so many reasons I can give you for why Boston university is a terrible place to work but for the sake of clarity and brevity, I’ve boiled it down to a few: 1. GENERAL DISREGARD FOR EMPLOYEES: BU doesn’t care about its employees, especially their health, safety, and well-being. In January 2020 at the height of the pandemic and before anyone was vaccinated, they demanded that all of their employees return to the office, and doubled down when challenged with concerns about things like very high COVID positivity rates in Boston at t he time. The only reason BU relented was because the governor put in additional restrictions due to the severity of the surge making in-office requirements infeasible. Among employees, it is generally accepted that, were they allowed to move forward with their in-office plan, many people would have gotten COVID and some would have died. 2. LACK OF INCLUSIVENESS & HOSTILE FOR ALL WHO ARENT STRAIGHT WHITE MEN: BU is a very patriarchical, hierarchical culture, and not a good place for BIPOC, women, or LGBTQIA+ people to work. They do things like create a trustees committee on diversity and inclusion, but then appoint two cis straight white men to chair it. By way of explanation, the chairs said they agreed to do it because white people had to take responsibility to educate themselves, very much missing the key difference between educating oneself and centering oneself. It should come as no surprise that no meaningful change came out of a group of people who failed to grasp the problematic nature of keeping historically marginalized persons out of positions of power. 3. VERY INFLEXIBLE HYBRID WORK POLICY: You can only work from home two days a week, you can never switch which days those are, you can only do so if your dean or senior vice president decides that they’re OK with anyone under their purview doing so (which means it isn’t available to a majority of people), and you’ll only be considered if you can prove that they can trust you enough to do your job remotely. It’s reasonable to ask why they would hire someone who could not be trusted to do their job, but BU operates on a baseline of mistrust of their employees. 4. LOW PAY & TERRIBLE BENEFITS: BU pays less than other universities in the area, and doesn’t start contributing to retirement plans until you’ve worked there two years (mid and late career professionals beware!), maternity and paternity leave policies are bare-bones (it was so bad that they recently had to improve it just to meet the minimum state requirements after a recent Massachusetts policy change), and unless you want dental students working on your teeth, your dental insurance will be terrible and expensive. Whatever they tell you, be wary. They won’t tell you any of the caveats to the things they claim to offer in your hiring process. Many people start their job and are shocked to learn during orientation that they won’t get an employee contribution to their 401(k) for two years, or that the hybrid work policy doesn’t apply to them because they are vice president or dean won’t allow remote work. It’s also common to be told one thing about maternity and paternity leave during your orientation or interview, and then find out that those so-called benefits are unavailable once you need them, or were significantly overstated. Ask as many and questions as you can and be as specific as possible so that you don’t end up in a bad situation.
