Pluspunten
Unbelievably great financial situation: in research, you can lead a project of your dreams, money is not an issue. Your salary is also one of the highest you can find in Europe. Great life to work ratio, good benefits. Mostly friendly environment. Culturally diverse but respecting every aspect of this differentiation. People of all walks of life, it is never boring at work or outside.
Minpunten
I have met several unique imbeciles in some of the positions of this institution. Starting from staff asking to change my birth certificate, finishing even with threats. Even though I was working for Joint RESEARCH Centre, the Human Resources just can't seem to figure out that administrative part of the RESEARCH centre usually deals with problems that scientists have and help them with these problems. Instead, I felt like I had to serve the administration, not the other way around. The administrative personnel has no grip on what they should do and how to do that properly. As such they are wasting the precious time of the researchers who are the core of the institution. One of the worst things is the recruiting process. Not only it's a terrible waste of time, I haven't met a single person who went trough the recruitment without some problems. Even if this institution is exceptional in being intolerant to racism and xenophobia, quite a large part of the staff does not differentiate the countries, and do not care about any tough feelings one may experience when completely mixing the countries and places of origin. Finally, some of the permanent staff does not work at all. Due to some reasons that they cannot be fired, they just relax and stay in their warm position drinking coffee and chatting all the time.