Pros
Pros: ivy league name. Ability to do incredible work becaue of funding and clout. Prospects after leaving. Pockets of caring and compassionate colleagues.
Cons
The culture of Columbia is that you should always be working. Your 9 to 5 is filled with meetings, and zooms calls that you're expected to show up to the office to hold (all over zoom). Then when 5 PM hits you get your actual work done until 9 PM. it is not uncommon to get texts to personal phone or emails well into the late hours of the night with the expectation that you respond. All teams are skeleton crews at best who are all overworked, underpaid, and severely understaffed. Trust is non existent and trusting colleagues is an uphill battle against possessive, social climbing, blame deflecting people. I started working for SEAS during the pandemic and since I've started 17 people have left SEAS (that I know of). The average time of an employee here is either 2 years or less or 15 years or more. This place churns and burns its staff and works under the idea of "if you leave its because you couldn't hack it". The best employees work at the lowest levels and are too afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation or being fired.