I also have a friend who works in the stats department in NYC. Back in 2011, he was getting paid almost 90K salary (not including benefits like you mentioned) and he told me that he loves his job because there's little or no responsibility and is certainly not challenging. He's still at UN and I haven't talked to him in the past couple of years. That and my personal experience interning at NGOs have convinced me that these jobs actually are quite chill and well-paid with little or no actual work (the hard work like field trips are usually delegated to locals, who are paid significantly less than the management, who are usually foreigners).

The hard work is basically optional. It's very difficult to get fired if you do the bare minimum, and the organization is geared for about half it's staff to not be productive. If you want to move up, you do work and take up the slack. If you're comfortable where you are, you do the minimum, which is very... minimal, and typically no one will stand in the way of either path.

What does "trued up" mean?

All the overseas employees working in NYC are not taxed. To create equity amongst employees, US employees get their salaries bumped up to make their offers appear tax-free. So if your salary is $90K, and you are American, they give you enough money to make it $90K after-tax. Since there are a lot of factors involved in this (examples: spousal income and if you have a mortgage deduction) it's not as simple as reversing the marginal tax rates.

Isn't avoiding wars kind of a big deal?

Yeah, but you know, besides that what have they done?