World Resources Institute reviews

Researchers receive the same salaries as program coordinators/managers; Junior researchers receives lots of responsibilities which is great, but they receive the same salaries as program coordinators; Unprofessional management; personal development might be interrupted if your manager leaves the organization; hierarchical organization, very long decision making process, more directors/managers than researchers;

Management is really, really bad. It's also a large reason why Junior level staff have little to no growth opportunity and end up leaving - there are hardly any tangible gauges for performance assessment in this company as it is largely subjective (as is the delegation of work). If there is a gap in a team's knowledge base, rather than invest in staff who are interested in taking on professional development work to gain new skills and fill it, the solution is usually to hire someone new. Additionally, many staff are overloaded with meetings, many of which return little to no action items as a result. There is considerable sitting around and chatting about things, with nothing getting done. There is tendency to focus on getting big name organizations in the industry to become a "partner" with them, rather than the focus on the projects at hand and having a measurable impact, and the lack of motivation to conduct proper, through research, at times sacrificing scientific accuracy and quality in favor of putting out a flashy end product as quickly as possible. From what I understand, WRI was once a research driven think-tank, but it seems to have adopted a "more talking, less doing" operation over the years, at least in my impression. It is a place that people use as a stepping stone rather than somewhere to put roots.