National Ecological Observatory Network reviews

Constant shuffling of upper management and admin processes. Bizarre working schedule that strains common sense. For each 2 week period you work 44 hours the first week and 36 the next, so you get every other Friday off. But, the way they made this possible without paying overtime for that first week is by making the work week start at 12 pm on Friday. So you have to work 9 hour days Monday through Thursday, then split your time on Friday between the two work weeks in the pay period. It isn’t clear whether or not this is all worth it because you get every other Friday off. In practice you have to work 44 hours every other week, and you feel it. The real kicker is when you take time off you need to use 9 hours of your paid time off, but we aren’t accruing time off any faster. Feels like a backdoor fix from upper management to save some money at the expense of workers’ home life.

When I worked there, the project was still starting up. There were definitely some hiccups getting everything figured out, but for a project with this scale, I was pretty impressed that there weren't more. I think a lot of people who complain about things not being perfect underestimate how many tiers there are on the totem poll that include both private and public aspects.