Pros
The benefits are exceptional, particularly the health benefits
Cons
The engineering and operations department, which is financed by the medical school, bears and demonstrates the contempt with which upper management holds it. During COVID, E&O was the only division of Duke Health whose employees were exempt from a Duke pledge to mask up and maintain social distancing during COVID. Why? Because management figured that E&O employees were so uniquely ignorant and Fox-brainwashed that they alone couldn't be expected to follow basic infection prevention -- in a *hospital*. Non-profits like Duke Health cannot spend money on investors, stocks, owners, exhorbitant salaries, profits, or non-medical investments. Because the health care industry generates money like a fire hose spews water, Duke Health's major problem is spending it all. As a result, overlooked departments like E&O bear no scrutiny or accountability. The E&O managers I know are untrained in management and have no intention of learning. Worse, the department lacks integrity, transparency, and accountability on any level. Employees are encouraged to lie on their task time databases. The department has accumulated old and disabled employees -- overwhelmingly Southern white males, by the way -- who stick around for the health and pension benefits, while young and ambitious employees are profoundly demoralized. I'm told turnover is extremely high. The chief of the department told me that she wanted input on "turning the Titanic around". But since the department promotes from within, its practices will remain profoundly unprofessional, dishonest, exclusionary, and rooted in a culture of 1950's Southern white male entitlement. Don't get me started on E&O's ethos of "the longest-employed Duke workers get to kick down at the most recently-arrived".