PhD students often ask me about the culture at RAND--how is it different from academia, other think tanks, and industry?
Caveating that I've only interviewed at these other places...my assessment, triangulated with colleagues:
Caveating that I've only interviewed at these other places...my assessment, triangulated with colleagues:
1. For me, one of the biggest culture shocks was that about half of the (70!) economists at RAND are women. Before RAND, I had never had a female econ professor or a female coauthor.
2. RAND is a multidisciplinary place that works on a broad range of topics. There's a lot less intellectual gatekeeping (whether by selection or by effect). The role-switching on teams (PI one day, contributor another day) amplifies this--there's no room for ego.
3. The incentive structures are unique. We are judged (in our staff evaluations) on our impact, not on our first-author pubs. Impact usually happens because of collective effort and insight--so, we value teamwork.
4. There are few career managers. Departments are headed by researchers who temporarily step back from research, and then, like Cincinnatus (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Qu…), go back to their f̶a̶r̶m̶s̶ full-time research. AKA your boss knows what you're dealing with.
5. Policy relevance is first and foremost. If your well-designed study has a null result, policymakers/ decisionmakers need to know this. We publish our findings, including the null ones.
6. You can work on pretty much anything you can find funding for. You're not hired to only work in one area or on one project. This gives you some pretty fantastic networking and mentorship opportunities.
7. RAND encompass a spectrum of work, ranging from consulting (solve this problem and only tell us the answer) to a hybrid (we have this question, how can you answer it) to academic inquiry (tell us the questions/methods/answers).
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