Pros
Non research salaries are quite good (researchers underpaid) Flexibility (although has drawbacks including people hiding at home doing nothing…) Office space is quite good and was improving Some great colleagues
Cons
Poor processes and procedures. Lots of forms and needless, unhelpful bureaucracy, but also a lack of proper oversight and governance where it was actually needed. Terribly wasteful. Odd relationships with stakeholders including government. It seemed like quite a bad place for junior researchers. Terrible senior leadership as many others have mentioned. They are all incompetent and should not have the level of responsibility they do. I found one to be a bit of a bully. I left whilst the reorganisation to ‘Turing 2.0’ (no, me neither) was still ongoing (after over two years of chaos which had achieved nothing). Many other people left who had also tried to hold out, but could not see an end to the madness. Whist there were some really great people left, I do feel that a lot of those who stayed - especially in more senior roles, including directors and senior managers, not just ELT - did so because they didn’t really care about it getting better (and were just happy to take the salary), or they enjoyed the drama and didn’t care that their careers had stagnated, or (most likely) they could not find another job that would pay them that much to sit at home achieving very little. So I only see it getting worse, unfortunately.