Not a good place to start your career - Anonymous employee Social Impact Employee Review

2.0
Nov 26, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

HR staff are helpful, benefits are above average

Cons

SI works its junior staff to the bone, yet considers them expendable. Many PAs work 50-60 hour weeks but then are either flatly denied overtime or are pressured into not even bothering to ask for it, for fear of getting negative reviews from their supervisors. PAs also struggle to balance ridiculous workloads, have no say in what projects they are assigned, and watch their feedback about their unreasonable workloads be routinely ignored. General management at the company is also very poor. For a MEL firm, SI is not very good at collecting data on its own operations, and management uses questionable metrics to decide who gets saddled with more work and who gets laid off when times are tough. A bloated executive structure has also driven up overhead costs, while management's solution is to lay off lower-level staff, sometimes by very shady means, such as laying someone off and replacing them immediately with someone they can pay less. SI has a mantra about being an honest and open workplace that is better than what its competitors can offer, but employees have been voting with their feet. I was part of a wave of people who left in 2018, some who had been there for less than a year and some who had been there for longer. We don't miss it.

Explore other reviews about Social Impact

5.0
Jul 30, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible work culture, wonderful people.

Cons

Significantly downsized post cuts to USAID

1.0
Jun 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The name of the company leads people to believe it is an impactful place to work for. It's not.

Cons

The new administration shut down nearly all work at SI because of the way they handled USAID. There is a skeleton staff now, but the good workers have moved on.

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