Leadership misuses talented staff - Principal Product Designer NPR Employee Review

3.0
May 2, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people at NPR are truly wonderful, bright, talented, dedicated — I could go on. I've never felt more supported by my coworkers. Working in support of NPR's mission makes the work gratifying, but there are diminishing returns there.

Cons

Leadership simply does not understand what their staff does. When we tell them what we do (and what we need to succeed), they respond with pleasantries but ultimately tune us out. Executives have a tendency of making grand promises to the board to get budget approval without consulting the teams who are responsible for product success. As a result, tech teams that used to have autonomy are now are largely viewed as implementation teams that produce features at the whim of executives, who largely ignore qualitative and quantitative research. I used to love it here, but sticking around has ultimately hurt my portfolio as I'm not given the agency to exercise my expertise.

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5.0
Mar 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I was fully remote, learned so much from a great group of peers, the union is strong and active, pay was fair

Cons

The federal funding saga put a damper on morale, but that was pretty outside of the scope of what my team/manager could control.

4.0
Jun 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

tiny desks happen at work

Cons

soulless and corporate, management is all-powerful, benefits are slowly disappearing, few career prospects unless you fit a certain "profile"

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