Pros
I had an unusual experience at CMI because of my own circumstances that I'm going to talk about first, then I'll go into the actual work. I started work and everyone was really friendly. I enjoyed my team and working with my boss. Two months after I started working I was diagnosed with cancer. CMI was incredibly accommodating. HR told me to do whatever I needed to do. My boss told me to take my computer home and just text him each day to tell him whether or not I was coming in, working from home, or taking a sick day. I went on disability for 6 months. During that time I turned 26 and needed to get on to CMI's health insurance. Nyota in HR was great with all of my paperwork regarding disability and my health insurance. I had no lapse in coverage and never missed a disability check. I had a massive surgery which required me to work from home as well as go to PT and have several follow up appointments. My boss allowed me to adjust my hours accordingly so I could attend my doctors' appointments. So if you're someone with a disability or chronic illness, CMI is incredibly accommodating. (Their health insurance when I worked there was Oxford United for anyone wondering). Now the actual work. I really liked my co-workers. Everyone is intelligent and hard working as well as friendly. Work hours are pretty flexible in general (as long as you work your full time week). Even though CMI is relatively new everyone in the field seems to know the institute and thinks positively of it.
Cons
I felt some anxiety while working here mainly because of the lack of work I had. Many employees talk about how "fast-paced" CMI is, but I never had that experience. It might have been my position or the environment of my previous job. I actually found the work I did rather dull and often completed projects with a lot of time to spare. I always felt like there was something I should be doing even if I finished all of my tasks and that kept me on edge. There wasn't really anyone I could ask questions to except for my boss. He was incredibly busy and I often didn't want to bother him with questions I thought would be insignificant to him. I didn't know there were other people who had my job title for other labs until months after I started working. I wish there was more interconnectivity between labs. Their shared data drive is also quite disorganized. This could make things like grant proposals challenging when there are several people working on one. I wanted to clean it up, but was worried about erasing something that was needed or confusing the rest of the people in the office. They also need to work on committing to a system of streamline communication in research.
