Pros
It was a cool building to work in I guess.
Cons
Where to begin… I never had a panic attack in my life until working at Ascend. I went into a bathroom stall to cry multiple times a week because I was so stressed out. Not stressed out because of the job, but merely management’s excessive demands. We also spent a lot of time on “tee-ups,” the practice of writing an email for your boss to send to external people. You would write the tee-up, then you often had to print the email; your boss would give you edits, and you would correct the edits and send for her to review again. There were often 2-3 iterations of this, all for the sake of sending an email. Fun times. It was busy work like this that caused you to work well into the evening and on weekends. I couldn’t even live my life outside of work because I was constantly thinking about the mountains of work awaiting me at home on a Saturday. I would simply be walking through the mall with my girlfriend and become overwhelmed with anxiety and panic at the pressing deadlines that awaited me. I now have been working in the same job for two years since ascend, a job with greater responsibility and much higher stakes, yet I am incredibly happy and love my work. Ascend should completely revamp their leadership. I appreciate their mission, but I’m not sure how an organization can grow with this rate of attrition and toxic culture that has infiltrated every level of the organization.
