program officer

program coordinator

project manager

program analyst

outreach coordinator

Institute of International Education

The Good: Fantastic colleagues with wonderfully diverse experiences and a truly global backgrounds. Great mission, with meaningful, important programs that can be rewarding to work on. 

The Bad:  Upper management lives on another planet. There is no company loyalty for hardworking, good employees. There is no effort to balance work loads and sometimes you're swamped. Not a good work/life balance often. Not paid well, as it is a non-profit. You're sometimes doing the jobs of two people. Managers are often not very experienced in managing people. Some really toxic people have risen higher while good, hardworking people have been ignored. 

The Ugly: Went through a disastrous restructuring campaign that has left it in a weaker, more incoherent, more messy structure. The organisation is struggling. People have been laid off left and right in the last year as they've needed to downsize to stay afloat. The president is still there even after all the other senior management in charge of the restructuring have been pushed out.

IIE has undergone a lot of changes in the past decade. Some were needed and useful, but there have been some very poorly planned and ill-intentioned initiatives that have significantly weakened the organization internally and tarnished its reputation in the field. Notably the mass firings of many talented people a few years back. Others brought in to replace them were often clueless, sometimes incompetent, and not as committed to the organization's goals and mission than those that were forced out.

IIE is a great place to "learn the ropes" of international education, training and development, but it is easy to top out in a position and without organizational support for your advancement, you have to have a supervisor that looks out for your development--some do; many unfortunately do not.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Simple work, great team. Work days were predictable and easy to conquer, much of your effort is measured in numbers, so you can make your own quotas throughout your days and work towards them. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Unreasonable expectations - often the team will be inundated, depending on the time of the year, and the expectations are high no matter the workload. The pressure makes some team members quite catty and stressed. It's a trickle down effect. The org is also overreliant on temp workers, so there's a constant churn of training new recruits and letting folks who know the work go so they don't have to pay benefits.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Worked remotely, but there were opportunities to get to know folk virtually. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Log in, select what you'd like to work on in a feasible amount of time, work in isolation, ask for help virtually via chat. Quiet days, unless you'd like to chat with someone virtually.

Every day is very different. I handle many aspects from arranging meetings, to acting as a liaison between my boss and external and internal contacts, to many forms of project management, and numerous routine administrative functions. I have learned new systems to do a great job with processing the payments for vendors. Management is pretty good, can be a bit mean when ready. The culture here is very diverse due to it being an international organization. The people are very friendly. The hardest part of my job is making sure the coding to payments are correct or we will have to complete journals to get the coding correct. Enjoyable part of my job working amongst other people throughout the entire institute.

IIE decided to eliminate all job titles/positions/roles across all of their US and came up with new ones.  Employees could apply for 3 jobs during what they called a "Redesign."  If you did not receive 1 of the 3 jobs you applied for, you were placed in a position.  They did not think through all of the steps of a restructure and many teams are stuck without leaderships or management.  Many staff members are still doing their old role and their new role because there is no one to pass previous responsibilities onto because the restructure was poorly planned.  Teams are now spread throughout US offices (and even US/International offices), which makes it easier to do any jobs from any office, but it makes team dynamics difficult.

Boy are they screwing this up. What used to be a pleasant work environment has turned into an unnecessary nightmare due to a "restructure." They are trying to create assembly lines rather than allowing personal oversight of individual programs, which has completely defeated staff who believed in the mission of IIE - to foster international education. Team members with decades of experience were shown the door, resulting in a constantly rotating young staff that keeps having to reinvent the wheel. The pay has always been low, but at least it was a pleasant workplace with a mission. The staff is very diverse… until you get to a certain level of management.

This is from the perspective of the department I supported.
The company is going through a major re-organization or redesign.
They are soon to celebrate 100 years.
I was in the IT PMO, however not sure if the department will still be there.
People are friendly when they have to be.
It seems people are not encouraged to speak up or add value.
Seems to appreciate "yes" type people, and support "not invented here" thought process. Can be slightly high school lunch room work culture dynamics.  There seems to be a generational gap between the staff and how senior staff talks to their junior staff, very parental/child dynamics.

IIE is one of the few non-profit organization with a mission to make a positive change and impact through education. IIE focuses on building bridges between countries around the world through educational exchange programs and strive to make educational opportunities accessible to people from undeserved communities and to those in adverse situation. 
Great place for people with a passion in the area of international education, international relation, cultural exchanges. If you are a hard worker and a passionate person this is the place for you with great benefits including tuition reimbursement and student loan reimbursement.

The people who work here are smart, driven, and incredibly capable. Some divisions have a great office culture and most people are working hard to innovate and grow professionally. 

Some sponsors can be tricky and make innovation and change difficult. Incredible benefits, specifically after working at IIE for one or two years. 

There is a lack of transparency that people are aware of, but not doing much about. Management is out of touch of people at lower grade levels. Salary is low.

The management in this organization likes to blame new staff for not doing the managements job on time. They send you the wrong documents all the time, micromanage, and then tell their supervisor that you did nothing for 6 hours. They also assign you loads of work and when you get sick tell you to drink tea and continue at work. They also hate it when you take time off from work, so expect to work all the way until Thanksgiving Eve or even Christmas Eve 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Program officer 3 salaries reported	$67,946 per year
Program coordinator 1 salary reported	$56,970 per year
Project manager 2 salaries reported	$64,320 per year
Program analyst 3 salaries reported	$66,959 per year
Outreach coordinator 4 salaries reported	$53,252 per year

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