Gates Foundation Project Manager/Associate Program Officer reviews

Very stressful environment. They suck the life out of you. There is no work-life balance even though they try to convince you there is. The upper management is not in touch with what the real work involves. They take imprudent shortcuts to look like they are saving money. There is a definite imbalance between the intellectual/academic knowledge and good business practices. They hire for a very specific bit of expertise and then there is verylittle mobility within the organization -- especially at the lower levels.

Only one part of the foundation is more or less functional and that's the India Country Office. To be based in Seattle is to be part of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy with House of Cards-like internal politics. No one knows who makes decisions and directors sabotage each other to win the influence of Bill & Melinda. The most bloodthirsty and politically strategic are the ones who stick around the longest. As a result, among management, you've got some good people who stick around for a year or two and the rest are bunch of Frank Underwoods who cut others down to prop themselves up. If you're able to get on a good team (say Nutrition or FSP) and stay focused on your grantmaking and external-facing work, then you might find peace. If you're sensitive or susceptible to internal politics, forget about it. There were high hopes that Sue Desmond-Hellmann would turn the ship around. Instead, she seems more concerned with promoting her own profile than reforming bad management. She filled leadership gaps with her former colleagues from Genentech that have only maintained the status quo and her C-level hiring has been very disappointing. Most program staff join Gates Foundation because it's such a behemoth in global development and we feel like we could make a big difference with just a few small tweaks. Sadly, we fail and we leave.