program officer

architecte

senior program officer

analyste

senior program specialist

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE

It is difficult to put a finger on what has made IDRC a less pleasant place to work over the past five years ago. Current leadership has attempted to align the centre's work with political priorities that are not appropriate. At the top, most staff have little confidence in the current president, who care not a wit for non-program staff and activities. Most critically, IDRC has also gone from being small to being medium-sized, and this has resulted in the culture becoming obviously more bureaucratic in several areas.

IDRC has one of the most dysfunctional IT units in government. Any work that relies on the success of a team is rarely completed. Leadership both micromanages and fails to properly support staff. IT managers have little sense of what users actually want, and instead fetishize standards and policies that are increasing irrelevant.

Be warned: this is not a unionized workspace and IDRC staff only have the same access to federal government jobs as the general public. Layoffs mean termination, not potential transfer to another part of government.

The work is great and very dynamic and offers wonderful international exposure. Its  a great place to learn and engage in interesting broad debates and learn things outside your area of expertise by engaging with different teams and partners in different parts of the word. The management has been very bad and bullying , harassment, favoritism and racism are problematic and a corporate priority.  This is evident by the high turnover, tense work environment, unrealistic workloads and difficult work-life balance most staff will testify to. The hardest part of the job was the toxic work environment and the bullying and systematic discrimination, and limited opportunities for growth and career advancement for technical roles. The most enjoyable part of the job was engaging with and learning about the dynamic and inspiring topics that are global interest .

IDRC pitches itself as unique but it is really an oversized "small organization" that is far too bureacratic. This is a Canadian government funded entity with offices worldwide.

The organization only seems to hire on the basis of one year renewable contracts much like academia or professional sports. Superstars may receive longer term employment. Exhausting and often pointless travel is required, sometimes for weeks on end (this may have changed due to pandemic) which is very disruptive to family life.

The work IDRC does is excellent, the brain power wandering the halls is staggering.  Bilingualism is a must.  They have been experiencing high rates of turnover and restructuring for the past several years and it have contributed to a bit of uneasiness in the staff, but that seems to be easing now.  The hardest part of the job is the workload expectation balanced against the amount of staff available to work on projects.

Enjoyed working with the other staff. Didn't feel that I was over supervised and able to contribute to making improvements to the job function. 
The hours were long initially but eventually became more reasonable.

Rewarding to help people in the developing world with effective and innovative solutions, even though my involvement is vicarious.  The IT group is very experienced.  Wide variety of projects.

Appeared to be a company interested in helping the international community.  Appeared to be a conscientious employer, good to its employees.  I was only there for a few weeks but I would recommend this company to others.

A stable of well-educated colleagues were a treasure. Internal culture of support and learning. 

High level of focus on accountability in spending public monies.

An excellent opportunity, and a group of intelligent and motivated people making real change in the world

Didn't have time to develop enough but it is an interesting place.

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Program officer 8 salaries reported	$88,817 per year
Architecte 1 salary reported	$28.07 per hour
Senior program officer 3 salaries reported	$119,603 per year
Analyste 3 salaries reported	$89,477 per year
Senior program specialist 1 salary reported	$129,829 per year

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