Pros
The staff working at Pursuit, particularly those who work directly with Fellows, are some of the most intelligent and dedicated people I've worked with in my career. I found this to be true for just about everyone I worked with no matter the role. Pursuit's mission attracts some excellent people. In general the pay at Pursuit is also quite good, particularly for a nonprofit. This is quite dependent on the role, but I found the pay to be more on par with a tech startup than a nonprofit. The CEO plays a factor in this, as he is somehow always able to make a connection that raises a ton of money for the organization. It's truly impressive. Finally, I think Pursuit could be a good place to work for individuals early in their career. If that's you, I think you'll get the opportunity to meet several professionals from different backgrounds, work somewhere with a great mission, and likely assist in a wide variety of projects that will be excellent for your development. Stay a year or two and then move on to your next great thing.
Cons
I'm writing this review some time after leaving Pursuit, as I really wanted to make sure what I said was thoughtful and not reactionary. With some time and space away from the company, I feel much more confident now in saying that this place is a mess. If you work at Pursuit, you may experience the following: - Projects being launched with lots of fanfare only to then be killed months later, after hundreds of hours of work. - Schedules for staff and Fellows (our "customers") changing constantly and significantly, sometimes with little warning or even after being told they would not change. - Priorities regularly shifting from quarter to quarter, based on the C-Suite's personal feelings and passions. - Absolutely no meaningful feedback from anyone in management. - Huge meetings without agendas or goals. It doesn't matter, as often these meetings are deleted or rescheduled an hour or less before their supposed to occur. - A steady stream of quitting from your Fellow coworkers, particularly those in middle management. - A solid amount of crying from both staff and Fellows. The C-Suite will say that a lot of this is because they're a startup and aim to be "agile" and "flexible" in how they approach the organization's "very hard work." This is just not true. The reason the organization is a mess is because the C-Suite is hyper-resistant to feedback of any kind. If it's not their idea, it will eventually be deemed a bad idea. This is a pretty big problem, because none of the C-Suite have any professional experience in education, nonprofits, or technology. This leads to a culture where experts are hired to lead a particular part of the various programs run by Pursuit, and then are told that their ideas are bad and that they just don't understand the "Pursuit secret sauce." After toiling for months, these experts will leave, having been demoralized and silently demoted to doing busy work while the C-Suite micromanages their projects with little knowledge of how to do anything. And that's just the work environment. If you think you'll just put up with the environment to do good work, you'll find yourself disappointed. I would describe the outcomes for the main program run by Pursuit as anecdotal. That is, Pursuit is happy to trot out the same few success stories whenever they are asked but is reticent to publish hard data on how many of their Fellows get jobs within six months after completing the program. But, don't just listen to me. Listen to the many other negative reviews on this page. It is astounding the number of reviews from 2016 or 2017 that identify the same problems the organization is experiencing today. It's my belief that the reason these problems persist is because the leadership has not changed throughout that entire tenure. It seems to be the only constant throughout this time.