Pros
Your co-workers become your family, and helping animals is the best feeling in the world.
Cons
Management will only allow you to advance if you’re one of their favorites, and the only way to do that is to be a sycophant who never questions their shady practices, lack of leadership, and the way they allow every other department to treat you like “the help.” They will withhold your “merit” raise for the most ridiculous of reasons despite you choosing to be a leader in your department and busting your behind to keep up with the work they pile on you, making you jump through hoops for pennies that don’t even remotely keep up with inflation, and then they will threaten to take the pennies away if you so much as look at someone “wrong.” If you manage to get yourself into the “in” crowd, you will love working at AHS. If you’re one of the “out” crew, you will more likely leave AHS with complex PTSD from their perpetual gaslighting. No, I’m sadly not exaggerating. If you want to be successful, make sure you’re either a stepford robot who does not think for themselves, or you’re someone who genuinely doesn’t care about doing the same thing for no money and no appreciation for the rest of your life. Instead of looking back at my time at AHS as something that helped me to thrive in my animal welfare career, I can genuinely say that I find myself thriving IN SPITE OF my time there. No organization with the mission AHS espouses, nor a company of its caliber and public visibility, should treat their employees so poorly. I was not fired. I left on good terms, and of my own volition. I am not a bitter ex-employee. This was just my experience, and unfortunately the experience of severa of my peers, many of whom were fired or forced to leave the department in lieu of being fired.