Don't Waste Your Time- Poor leadership and growth opportunities
Pros
You get to experience cool events downtown. If you're lucky and liked, the CEO might give you Suns tickets every once in a while. If you are looking for a job straight out of high school/college, this could be a great start to your career, but please don't stay more than two years. Past that, you'll be wasting your time.
Cons
There is very little opportunity for internal growth within this organization. Leadership often chooses to hire externally rather than promote employees who have already demonstrated their value. Compensation growth is also limited, with annual raises typically hovering around 3%, despite upper-level leadership receiving significantly larger increases. The high turnover rate reflects these ongoing issues. Instead of addressing compensation and retention concerns, the organization invests heavily in personality assessments and team-building initiatives designed to help employees "get to know one another." While relationship-building is important, many employees feel these resources could be better spent addressing the root causes of dissatisfaction. Here's a magnet with my hobbies. Could have just asked me, but instead you paid money to find out. There is also a noticeable divide between office staff and the teams working in the field. The Ambassador and Clean + Green teams are the face of the organization and contribute tremendously to the community, yet they often feel overlooked and undervalued. Despite the critical role they play, they are among the lowest-paid employees and are frequently excluded from meaningful engagement with senior leadership. The workplace culture can be challenging. Gossip and unprofessional behavior among managers were common, and there were multiple occasions where employees were discussed negatively behind their backs. I personally witnessed my manager speaking about coworkers in inappropriate ways and even overheard conversations about myself. She along with another manager were always in each other's office gossiping. This made it uncomfortable to be around. Unfortunately, some of the leadership behaviors I observed served as examples of how not to manage a team. Lastly, I have never seen such a bad leader as I had in the CEO. She rather save face and let employees take the fall before anything looked bad on her. She was unapproachable and rude on many occasions. I wish I could look up to her but sadly, another person I learned what not to do from. While there are passionate employees who genuinely care about the mission, the organization would benefit greatly from investing more in its people through professional development, fair compensation, stronger leadership, and a more respectful workplace culture.
