A sinking ship burning nonprofit money - Anonymous employee Design Museum Boston Employee Review

Great team, working on some amazing projects — you can make impact here

Small team — we all wear many hats, we need to grow

Incredible mission and vision on paper. Externally (optically) this organization is going places.

They strive to be an innovative, collaborative, and supportive organization but it all falls extremely short. Employees are worked hard, have to reinvent the wheel every few months, and are expected to exceed all goals regardless of capacity (resources, finances, or time). All of the things you’d expect to find at a small startup, however, in addition to all that stress and exhaustion is a toxic underlying attitude. Employees are expected to do without questioning. Consistently gaslit into believing you are “lucky” to work there. You’re hired thinking you’ll be part of this big design movement, have autonomy, or at least be provided the space to give feedback or suggest improvements. Expected to have initiative, but to never use it. Expected to conceptualize, write, and design content which ends up being extremely edited or tossed altogether. The organization is run on optics alone – tokenizing and performative - no real empathy or inclusion is internalized. This leads to a toxic work environment where most people end up frustrated that their input isn’t valued, leading to extremely high turnover.