Vantaggi
-Good basic benefits (e.g. 20 days PTO, 3 months parental leave) and nice add-ons (e.g. flexible work schedules, wellness reimbursement, FSA). -Given how many teams are spread out geographically, investing in retreats, meetings, and in-person time has been valuable. -Positive relationships with external partners in the education reform landscape. -Overall, high salaries (especially among leadership) for an education nonprofit. -Some really caring and dedicated people on staff, despite a fair amount of negativity about the org.
Svantaggi
-Immense staff and leadership turnover that took a huge toll on morale and kept the work from progressing smoothly. Happened at national level as well as in chapters. -Many layers of management, with many bad or just new managers. -Poor alignment between national and chapter work streams. -Anti-union donors makes it hard to message a nuanced message about the necessity for union change, especially in the field. -Decision-making is still very much held at the Co-CEO level and this makes moving work forward quickly very difficult. -Performance management system is a joke. As is lack of transparency and alignment on titling and salary bands. People are either under-qualified (often at managing director level) or overqualified for their jobs (esp. among outreach directors). There is no consistent understanding/approach to promoting talent or creating new opportunities. -There are few "true-believers" of the union engagement part of the mission on staff. Many more believe in the teacher voice aspect, but this is honestly superficial at best. -Generally, staff spend a lot of time venting about the problems in the organization and this breeds a culture of negativity and even toxicity.