Vantaggi
Except for the associate-level positions (many associates have been underpaid), the pay is fair for the role you have (but not nearly enough for the amount of work you do). Benefits are fine. They have a good PTO policy, but whether or not you'll actually have the time to use it is a different story. No one ever makes you feel bad about taking PTO, which passes the bare minimum, but the amount of work you have to do (and thereby stress you put on yourself) ahead of taking time off and then also catching up on work when you return, easily makes you question if taking time off will be even worth it. (E.g. You want to take 2 days off, but now you're working a 60-hour workweek just to take those 2 days.) Staff is diverse and also come from various professional backgrounds that bring a wealth of different experiences to the team. Interns and contractors are treated relatively well (but employees are not). Notice how most reviews are from interns. Also, they only recently started paying their interns, which speaks to how slow their path to progress is. Especially for a “social impact” agency, you’d think they’d have more progressive values and be leading the charge for things like ensuring even interns are paid for their labor.
Svantaggi
I wish someone had been honest with me or warned me about the job expectations and work culture here before I joined. So this is my warning to you, dear reader: don’t work here unless you like giving up your entire life for your job and constantly feeling like your work is never good enough. I never would've taken this job if I had known what I know now. This job cost me my mental health, and I know I'm not the only one. If you enjoy your time off after 5 pm, peaceful mornings before you start your workday, your weekends, holidays, or any time to yourself, you are infinitely better off finding a different job. The work/life balance here is next to nonexistent because there are absolutely no boundaries with clients. Employees are expected to practically be on-call for their clients. We're not doctors doing life-saving work, but this company acts like we are because of a false sense of urgency the work culture has created. People have a hard time discerning between important v. urgent requests from clients, and so everything is urgent at this company. We bend over backward for our clients, and the people-pleasing work culture this company has for their clients has ultimately created a toxic one for the employees at PD. If a client says jump, we say how high. It doesn't matter if you're currently incapable of jumping or if jumping is an absolutely terrible idea. Clients are also allowed to browbeat and bulldoze PD employees, and upper management will do little to nothing to help or stop it. The attitude is basically "the client is always right," even when they're most definitely wrong. And at what cost? The well-being of PD employees. It's clear that this company does not value its employees if they allow this kind of mistreatment and won't stand up for them. If you're also hoping to grow your career here, you're much more likely to stunt it. There is little to no mentorship from a large majority of managers because everyone is so overworked. There's also a huge lack of trust between departments and coworkers, so a lot of micromanagement happens, making it extremely difficult to grow and advance. I've seen many over-qualified people get placed into associate-level positions and people in manager/director-level positions being micromanaged and not allowed to effectively lead by upper management. It's ironic how they'll hire people to do a job, but then won't trust them to do that exact job that they were hired for. The micromanagement that happens at this company is next level. To give you an idea, I've never worked at a company that reviews your emails before you can send them out, sometimes even internally to other members at PD, not just to clients. It's the perfectionist culture at this company that causes unnecessary scrutinous reviews. Every deliverable is not only reviewed under a microscope, but multiple microscopes, sometimes by people who don’t even need to be involved in the review process. Because of this, you’ll constantly feel like you can’t do anything right and that nothing is ever good enough. I’ve seen many brilliantly confident and more than capable people, myself included, develop imposter syndrome because of what we endure here. And it’s not because we don’t have thick skin. It’s the constant feedback that’s almost always negative, the unnecessary criticism, the perfectionist culture. That all starts to gaslight you no matter how good you are at taking feedback, especially when you encounter it day in and day out, not only from clients, but also at nearly every level internally with the PD team as well. And despite how they like to tout that they're so innovative with change-making ideas, they're actually extremely hesitant to change and even averse to it. So if you think you're going to come to PD and contribute new and exciting ideas and bring them to life, it will most often be an uphill battle. Many people get discouraged from contributing because they've been told "no, that's not the way we do things" one too many times. From what I've seen, based on the people routinely getting promotions, the best way to do well at this job and get promoted is to people-please—do exactly what you're told and don't step out of line in the way things are done, do everything the client wants and when they want it even if you don't have the time or capacity, and work overtime because they glorify people who work long hours. What’s worse is almost everyone at this company sees exactly what’s wrong, talks about how awful things currently are, and knows that things need to change, but then will turn around and continue to drink the kool aid. But hey, that’s how you get promoted here. And then those same toxic behaviors they complained about? They’ll behave the same way towards other people and the people they manage. PD is exactly the kind of place where “you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Last but not least, if there's one clear indicator and an absolute red flag about this company, it's that it constantly refers to itself as a family.