Very Bureaucratic and Siloed Organization - Anonymous employee RTI International Employee Review

2.0
Sep 3, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good production support (graphic artists, admin assistants) allows researchers to spend more time focusing on research rather than time-consuming administrative tasks. Good place to find your research niche since you are exposed to many different research topics and clients and work on multiple projects simultaneously.

Cons

Poor management -- being intelligent does not equate to being a good manager. A lot of pressure for mid- and upper-level staff to write proposals, win work, and minimize their time spent on overhead. However, who gets to work on which proposals is a very political process. Ineffective leaders are not removed. Employees who commit research fraud or who are verbally abusive to more junior staff are not penalized. Catty burnout environment, CEO seems like a dud -- not sure he has any real substantive qualifications to effectively lead a research organization -- doesn't seem like a good fit. There is no real corporate culture because some departments are very stringent about clocking in and out, whereas others allow you to work from home. As a result, morale is very low in many areas of the company.

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5.0
Jun 8, 2026
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Pros

RTI has a good mission

Cons

Adaptation to sudden federal funding loss.

3.0
Jun 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work and reasonable working hours

Cons

If you're a PhD who enjoys research and hopes to use empirical research skills at a research institute, you'll likely be disappointed as I was. Projects in my business unit were largely implementation projects that required very little creativity or data analysis. I was told by my manager that empirical-research projects are harder to come by and when those opportunities do arise, everyone wants them. Even then, project directors are very unwilling (in my experience) to let you branch out to other projects. Using any overhead time to work on your own research is also discouraged, so I ended up working on manuscripts in my personal time. And there's no funding to attend conferences either. On top of all of this, constant layoffs create an aura of uncertainty and the feeling that you're lucky to even be there even when compensation for similar roles in private sector is far better.

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