DAI reviews

3.9

76% would recommend to a friend

(559 total reviews)

James Boomgard

71% approve of CEO

29% positive business outlook

DAI has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 559 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The DAI employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Beratung industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

559 reviews
1.0
Dec 15, 2023

Awful Management

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some coworkers are good and friendly.

Cons

Too much emphasis on DEI initiatives that seem to cut people/benefits down to the lowest level/lowering the bar to maintain "equity", rather than lifting people up.

1.0
Nov 3, 2022

Yikes

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You get free lunch if you go into the office on Mondays and Thursdays. This is less a pro and more a necessity because salaries, promotions and bonuses are frozen against rising inflation.

Cons

Where to begin? The use of racial slurs in meetings by senior leaders? Rampant sexual harassment? A peak under DAI's rug would reveal toxicity strong enough to knock out a small town. Staff known for their misogyny are merely shipped off to country offices where lawsuits are less likely. Friends of management are given jobs despite proven under performance. Pressure to do more with less is making people physically sick. Blame that should rest solely on the shoulders of inept project leaders is shifted to the most junior staff, but in the words of the CEO 'if they don't like it, they can leave'.

3.0
Oct 25, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The majority of the people I worked with at DAI are fantastic--interesting, smart, hardworking, kind. The work is interesting and sometimes impactful and you can get exposure to big development actors like USAID, which can be helpful for your resume. There may be opportunity for travel in some cases. Work/life balance and benefits vary widely across projects but in my experience was generally fine. My time at DAI did help progress my career and expanded my network. I heard from colleagues that mobility across projects or to and from headquarters was doable.

Cons

There are a few major issues that made working at DAI quite challenging and led to employees feeling unsupported: 1. There is a total lack of transparency around salaries (and it seems very intentional). It seems that they use "proof of prior employment" as a thinly veiled request to see prior salary history and use that to determine salaries, rather than basing it on experience or market rates. As a private company it is deeply disappointing that they consistently underpay (pay is often similar to the nonprofit industry). 2. DAI has a serious, serious diversity problem (though I recognize this is true across the industry in general). There is some acknowledgement and "conversations" about this issue but no resources, guidance, or concrete steps to address it. At all levels of the US office/projects, it is mostly white employees, particularly in leadership positions. 3. The processes and systems on projects (and likely at the corporate office too from what I have seen) are rudimentary at best. There's no software, databases, or other systems for financial, project management, or MEL functions. Projects have to recreate these from scratch and rely on dozens of excel spreadsheets (literally) to manage finances in the hundreds of millions. The processes, policies, and lack of systems often border on kafkaesque. 4. Project and Home Office (HO) staff have vastly different benefits. For example, only HO/corporate staff can become vested in company stocks. This is not made clear at the time of application, onboarding, or after. The distinction between projects and corporate is not made clear in job descriptions. 5. Projects are at the mercy of HO's financial processes. Payments to subcontractors, vendors, consultants, etc. are consistently paid late due to inefficient, convoluted processes with no accountability for the operations or payments teams.

Viewing 19 - 21 of 559 Reviews

Glassdoor has 698 DAI reviews submitted anonymously by DAI employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if DAI is right for you.