Great work, genuine people, leadership is a little out of touch sometimes
Pros
Challenging, exciting, meaningful, and impactful work. Very respected in the field and skilled at what they do. Brilliant staff that is mission-driven and truly cares about what they do. Non-leadership staff are very supportive of each other. Leadership is not perfect but appears to make efforts to listen to staff feedback about organizational planning and priorities. You really know you're at a place that is very respected by their partner organizations and others in the community. Good work life balance--hours are reasonable, telework permitted once per week, workload is hardly light but it's appropriate, no one gets really mad if you're a little late now and then as long as you maintain overall professionalism.
Cons
Positive experience is very dependent on who your manager is--some teams have lower morale relative to others. Management is not always consistent in terms of how they treat their subordinates, I felt that my manager treated some better than others (I am not biased here because I had a really good relationship with my manager, but I recognize that not everyone had the same experience). Non-leadership staff can feel under-valued. A little full of themselves and uptight sometimes. Little to no opportunity for advancement, which leads to high turnover, because senior staff and leadership have been there for so long; no one is leaving and the org is not expanding. Pay is not competitive; structure of pay and benefits tilt in favor of more senior people and leadership rather than incentivizing younger staff and keeping morale high across the organization. Not good at integrating temporary but important staff, such as legal fellows, into organizational planning. Leadership does not adequately value employee morale or work hard to maintain it. Not diverse enough. Leadership are set in their ways and are not good at giving newer/younger staff opportunities to grow. Not dynamic enough when it comes to processes and organizational norms--for example, adopting a work from home policy was a big controversial issue, even though it's very common for other orgs in the field to do this. They do not invest in technology; staff computers were totally outdated, almost no one had laptops when I was there, new website is really bad which lessens their impact. Leadership are set in their ways and are not good at giving newer/younger staff opportunities to grow.
