UCR fosters a friendly, open work environment; employees maintain long careers.
Pros
There is a great community at the University of California, Riverside, and I really enjoyed working with the people in my office. They were always very friendly, courteous, and open about what needed to get done, procedures and processes for handling different tasks/jobs, and were always open to questions when I first started working there and was learning the ropes. My supervisor was also very understanding if I had an emergency and would not be able to make it to work on time (or could reschedule hours on a different day), and openly gave praise when I completed a project and surpassed her expectations.
Cons
For my role there was not a whole lot of career advancement opportunities, but one could move laterally to different departments to seek upward mobility. I also did not have a formalized training program; I was hired because I had the desired skills and competency for the position, but I had to learn all the procedures, regulations, go-to people, and office infrastructure simply by asking and just remembering everything -- which takes a very long time and can easily overwhelm someone without anything being written down in a manual or reference book. I would also have liked regularly scheduled feedback sessions to discuss what I was NOT doing well. Praise was received for good work, but no one told me about areas I could improve on.
