Huge disconnect and animosity - Anonymous employee Year Up United Employee Review

2.0
Aug 21, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent benefits for a nonprofit (though they are either expensive or hard to use)

Cons

1) huge misalignment between work and mission - I took this role thinking I would be doing one thing that was mission aligned and ended up doing something very different and never feeling connected to the mission and it felt like everything was always on pause that you couldn’t ever do any real work 2) staff seems to have a savior complex that overshadows making real impact. Lots of talk of doing the good work but often seems to come from a place of “oh these poor participants” rather than in seek of justice. Makes it so they are willing to adjust impactful stuff to make space for how they look publicly 3) there is a huge disparity in pay and workload across the org. Some ppl on the team make salaries that qualify them as upper class and some people make salaries that barely afford them the cost of living in their area. CEO makes an insane salary and regularly makes statements and comments that reflect that she is just living a veryyyyyy different version of life than some staff and our program participants. Pay caps and ranges and difficulty understanding career paths may pigeon hole you in lower salary. 4) lots of animosity amongst staff members. Lots of shade that gets thrown on Slack. Lots of pointed fingers and demands. They wrap their animosity in professional niceties while actively working to make people miserable and look bad behind the scenes or using subtle key words to throw shade. 5) no communication. They don’t communicate policies, plans, projects, etc. Often times no one knows what’s going on, what decisions are made, who to go to, or where to look. No one ever knows what’s up and then they just point fingers at who’s fault that is. 6) They did RIFs without telling anyone it was happening so you never knew if it was going to be you or you’d find out someone you were working on a project with got let go when you saw their account was deactivated. They also moved all virtual just to announce an RTO six months later and had a put up or shut up attitude about it. When people were upset about lack of communication for both, CEO pretty much told us it wasn’t our business. 7) trying too hard to be corporate. I get that the money comes from the corporate partners but this is still a nonprofit (though they don’t like to advertise that way) so it would be nice to not feel like you’re working someone that puts profit over people.

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Year Up United Response
10mo
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. We value all feedback, and encourage you to discuss your experiences with us further as we would like to better understand your recommendations in order to better support our community. If you email us at feedback@yearupunited.org, we’ll be in touch to find time to connect.

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5.0
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Pros

Flexibility, team culture, colleague dedication, meaningful work

Cons

Sudden benefit elimination (professional development funds, sabbatical, student loan support, etc.), sudden change in hybrid-work policy,

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5.0
Jan 21, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Competitive compensation - Excellent organizational leadership, passion, and culture - Programs really make a difference in the students' lives

Cons

Any new site comes with some growing pains and so we are still figuring some things out as we go. Could use a little more direction or "best practices" from other sites or leadership. But again, these things come with any new sites!

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