Pros
Salary compensation (if you can successfully convince them you're worth a higher price, not all are well paid but when you convince them there is no true ceiling which can be to your benefit), Bonus pay (if you have a good manager advocating for you within their ridiculous subjective way of measuring 'value created vs total contribution potential'), Unlimited PTO/sick days, 401k matching, healthcare benefits, Employee Assistance Program (free counseling available), Nice office setting and amenities. The flatness of the organization allows for a lot of potential lateral movement as a different type of growth opportunities. Exposure to some cool partner stories that do feel like they're making a difference. Cool coworkers for the most part who genuinely want to do good work and make an impact.
Cons
The largest startup you will ever experience in your life. I don't ever believe it will get out of startup mode because they abuse the MBM idea of Creative Destruction destroying any efficient processes or ideas in favor of trying 'experiments' or new 'frameworks' in hopes of making good progress that never happens. The problem is lack of leaders who actually know how to deal with change management. So, leadership swirls making everyone else swirl and, because they don't actually have to do the ground work, they don't realize their swirling on planning/strategy all year long severely mitigates the ability for any real impact to happen. You won't own a budget. Your boss won't own a budget. Your boss' boss won't own a budget. Budgets are completely non existent here. No one knows what the ceiling is and maybe there isn't one. But go ahead and pitch for millions of dollars anyway and make s forecast. Completely irresponsible way of practicing financial stewardship and raises flags on how ethically run the organization really is. If there were more financial transparency then perhaps this really crazy way of managing money could be embraced. It's essentially zero based budgeting for everything you (want) to do. Their business pipeline isn't great so they rely on a core set of leading partners for repeat storytelling and content. It's the same ones on the website repackaged in so many different ways to create the perception that there's lots going on when there isn't..not truly if they were honest with themselves. Storytelling and media publicity is highly recognized and praised quickly as a 'win' rather than achieving actual transformational change. They will scrutinize every proposal you make to try to do something that will drive change and make you justify your ask for $50k, yet will say yes quickly to investing millions of dollars on partnerships with high profile celebs for a fleeting event with no true transformational results attached to them. Some underqualified leaders who got the job out of legacy and favoritism. There is absolutely cronyism in the org despite it being against cronyism. Hypocrisy at its finest. Overuse and abuse of MBM jargon and internal phrases like 'good of the order' that make you feel like you're in an episode of the Handmaid's Tale. Can we get an eye roll emoji reaction on Teams for every time that is said at the end of a meeting? Lots of cyclical conversations, theoretical and academic. If you're a policy nerd and agree with all their principles then you might thrive here. Fast paced yet slow to achieve results, low creativity. A place where I think good marketer/advertising portfolios would shrivel and die if you stay too long. Severe lack of racial/ethnic diversity especially in mid to senior leadership. There are some strong female leaders but all male and female leaders are White. They would never defend a DE&I strategy because they don't believe in any kind of mandates and probably will say it's about diversity of the minds and that diversity comes in many forms. But let's be real...you can't be taken seriously about serving underserved communities in some of these issue areas when your own staff make up doesn't reflect any of these communities or experiences. Some of the most privileged upbringings of people are here and leading. Even though they say they're inclusive this definitely will not feel like a welcome place for a really liberal democrat. I am not one but some things have been said in meetings where I hope to God someone in the room isn't a closet liberal dem. I have had coworkers in this position and they did the work but didn't always agree and eventually left. Extremely dysfunctional internal communication. There was once a re-org that merged a few issue areas into one that was only sent to a cohort of leaders via email. Never spoken about at all staff. Never sent out via all staff emails or internal newsletter. If you knew, you knew. If you didn't you would find out through the grapevine and wonder why you were left out. Same with hiring and firing. You don't hear lots about new positions opened until after they're hired and firing can happen suddenly without much explanation.