Young leadership has yet to grow into the challenges of running a national organization.
Pros
Leadership trusts people, and as a natural result, I saw a tendency for people to have a lot of latitude. This extended from working hours to communication style to projects to work on. While this may be less true in lower echelons of the organization, it made for a very fluid experience in work/life balance. Hand in hand with that are a lot of people that are fun to hang out with all day - nothing dreary about the place. For a young, out-of-college position, there are lots of opportunities to be creative and experiment. Good springboard for a career, if you're just starting out, are self-motivated and creative.
Cons
While I could make statements about the benefits, I don't expect an organization of this age or size to have astounding benefits. That said, they were underwhelming. The benefits, however, I think are just one symptom of the maturity level of the organization. There is a profound disconnect between how this company sees itself and its culture against reality. Not to be interpreted as some kind of intentional untruth, the upper management just seems to not have a level of self-awareness that comes with seasoned leadership. This manifests in all the ways you would expect a green leader to: high energy mixed with unpredictable changes of direction, overconfidence, lack of common vision, perpetually fractured communication, and misguided priorities. You may hear many times that the company "feels like a startup," which underplays the fact that at over 10 years old should be well beyond the adolescent years of a startup culture. The roller-coaster, wild wild west mentality that a successful startup trades for stability as soon as possible is something they cling to as if it were something to strive for. On the other side of the coin of creative opportunities, is a lack of structured opportunities to grow. If you're turned on by the idea of mentorship or apprenticeship, you're looking in the wrong place. Absentee bosses and closed door meetings are par for the course. One reason it so hard to find mentors is that there are very few experienced people who work there. Take a poll of the home office and you will find an astonishing number of people in leadership positions who have never even worked at another company or have just a few years experience, leading a similar demographic of people who are new to the company, new to the industry, or new to their careers entirely to the point that there is significant imbalance in street cred.
