An old institution that could do with modernising - Fellow CERN Employee Review

2.0
Feb 1, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The culture at CERN is pretty terrific, the people here take their work very seriously, with real curiosity and passion. It really is cool to be working on the frontier of physics. Collaboration is important here.

Cons

Unfortunately the age of CERN means a lot of the technology is what could charitably be classed as "legacy". You could end up working on software that should've went away with the Aztecs. As a software engineer I've often found myself in a development silo, which is to say I've been given a project and expected to go away and just do it; without much in the way of feedback. If you like working by yourself, that should be fine, but if you want experience of team-based development then you may not find it here. I describe CERN as an old institution in terms of age, but unfortunately it can be rather regressive as well. I've witnessed colleagues being blatantly sexist and transphobic. I would hope that an institution on the cutting edge of physics research would be more progressive.

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CERN Response
7y
Thank you for your feedback. Collaboration, passion and curiosity are indeed key drivers for CERN. With regards to the 'Cons' of your review, as a large, multicultural, multidisciplinary organization, CERN values such feedback to continuously provide the most optimal working environment for all collaborators. Diversity is a richness for CERN, and is one of the Organization's five core values: a diversity policy and a Diversity Office are in place since 2012. The Diversity Office leads various activities such as seminars or events, to raise awareness among the CERN population on diversity-related matters – in 2018, CERN hosted more than 20 events on such topics. Furthermore, CERN’s HR department is very sensitive to developing its policies and practices so that they shall include each and every (prospective) member of personnel working at CERN. Should you wish to report your experience, we have various support structures at CERN that will welcome you with the utmost confidentiality, details of which you will find on the cern.ch/hr/wwfw pages.

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Cons

Maybe the primary communication method could be email instead of phone calls? I sometimes miss phone calls, but will check every email.

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