Seattle Opera Reviews

Pay is far below a living wage. Corporate structure makes change slow going and frustrating. Decisions from leadership can be confusing and frustrating.

As with most theatre organizations and non-profits, the hours can be extremely long, the pay is woefully inadequate for everything you're asked to do (at least for those under Director-level), and nearly all initiatives are wildly understaffed/under resourced. The amount of guilt heaped upon employees to do much more than should be humanly possible given the funding/staffing is enormous and back-breaking. It is not a healthy environment and burn out is incredibly common. Despite sweeping budget cuts, employees were asked (and coerced) to do more with less to please management. It was the only time in my career that I envied hourly workers, as salaried employees were badly taken advantage of and guilted into working much more than was reasonable for the money we were paid. Though hourly workers were also not paid fairly, at least they got overtime for additional hours.