Vantaggi
The employees, below management level, are kind and caring people who give you their effort. They make working here a better experience. Plenty of group bonding activities to bring people together. Which was generally nice for younger employees and people new to NYC. The sentiment of working in a climate change based company feels meaningful.
Svantaggi
Pay is below market average for almost all positions here. Benefits are also bare minimum with nothing much other than single person healthcare coverage. No additional coverages or 401k incentives. You can also not expect much in terms of promotions or meaningful raises. Most of the time, raises are only inflation based. The company has never had a functional promotion system that they kept in place for more than a year. This has typically resulted in most people never really getting a promotion as every year feels like a reset from the previous year as the company gets a new idea on how to monitor growth. This issue also occurs because they do not invest in HR. They do not always have an HR rep and when they do they do not stay long, as there is an incredible amount of turnover here. A new HR rep comes in and the cycle starts over with new ideas. Moving up in this company or getting paid well enough to live remotely near comfortable in NYC is near impossible unless you are in management. Which is where the real pain point comes in for pay. Everyone is paid under market rate and barely gets paid more each year as we are told, "We take pay cuts to be here". Management constantly pushes the narrative that we all need to get paid less so that the company can keep doing its work and “saving the world”, since this is a non profit. However, in comparison to the majority of workers, management level employees' salaries are quite high with significant raises every year. It is very much a case of management getting paid well to keep everyone else motivated in the mission and not concentrated on salary. The same person that tells you to accept less, is not accepting less. The amount of work expected of each employee is extremely disproportionate to the pay they make. You are absolutely expected to work well over 40 hours each week and pretty much be available all the time when deadlines are coming (deadlines are always coming because of the insane schedule and pacing). Regardless of position and if you got your work done, it is a group effort to get a product out to market to make a deadline. In weeks leading to a deadline you will be expected to work long days and on weekends. Working this much (still for less than market value) is the standard at this company. You do not get viewed as going above and beyond for the company by doing all this extra work, because everyone else also is expected to do the same. This means you generally do not get a promotion or bigger raise or anything for working extra, because it is just the standard. Working less than the standard or not pitching in as much as everyone else (even if it’s still more than a normal week's worth of hours) is an easy way to be seen as an employee who “is not committed to the mission”. Employees who don’t go the extra mile generally have less financial incentives at end of year reviews and are more likely to be let go. You will get checked on if you are working late devoting yourself to the mission or not. Like “party-parrot” emojis being sent in chat at 3am, where the correct thing to do is reply to it with an emoji of your own showing that you are online and saw it. Why is the standard level of work here always more than a standard work week? Well, that is because the CEO of the company is extremely aggressive with their goals. Which is not a bad thing to have a big vision and make it happen. However, the issue comes in when product launches are created with shorter distances between each other to the point it just feels like all year is a huge sprint to get work done. The demand for more work to get done is always growing yet team sizes don’t often grow as much to keep up with that demand and employees salaries aren’t matching the demand for work either. Launches are not kept to plan either as no one actually has any say in this company other than the CEO. The team will agree to criteria for a product launch, and during the course of that launch you can expect the deadline to move up and for a lot more content to be added to it. To meet this new deadline with double the work, you are expected to just work very long weeks. So why do employees accept this kind of life? A life where you burn yourself out over continuous product launches after working very long weeks and still can’t even make market value for your position. The answer is “Family”. The idea that this is a work family is extremely prevalent throughout the company. The CEO often refers to employees more in terms of family than a work colleague. Between treating employees like a family member and having a bunch of group events, employees can really bond here and feel content with the situation. It feels good to be a part of a family and be close to others. Unfortunately, this is actually used as a way to have control over employees. It is a lot harder to speak up about disagreements, or working too many hours, or being underpaid if you feel like you are going against your family. It is a more emotional experience considering leaving here for a new job when you are leaving your family. It is much easier as an employee to accept the hours and the low pay and work extremely hard to make their family proud instead of sticking up for themselves and their own value. This place runs on getting people to accept less, work more and feel good about it. Turnover is very high here because of the pay and work/life balance. So, you get many opportunities to watch the CEO calling someone “family” one day, and then not even speaking to someone after their 2 week notice. Proving the idea that it is not a family and it is just business. It is not just about pay and hours, there is also a problem with career growth. Management is not truly interested in your development. They are much happier to keep you in your place to keep a lower cost. You won’t find many opportunities to gain meaningful promotion and truly develop yourself. A lot of employees who leave are told they can not be promoted because they do not meet necessary skills but then are finding at other companies that they do meet the criteria and are paid much more fairly. Most people’s careers are stagnant here other than just the aspect of gaining years of experience.