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Achievement First

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Smart people, toxic culture - Associate Director Achievement First Employee Review

2.0
7 Sept 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The majority of my colleagues were very smart people who worked really hard and were passionate about the mission and cared about children.

Cons

Management played favorites -I was part of a debrief where the leaders planned how to tell an internal candidate to improve their application; this person was ultimately the person hired while no other candidates got advice on their application or got to resubmit it. This is just one example but happened many other times where a decision for hiring was made and the interview process was performative (mgmt had already decided who they were going to hire). Toxic culture - AF's culture is that the work is more important than your own well-being. When I gave my 2 weeks notice for another opportunity to continue to work in education, I was scolded and told my decision was the "most selfish decision ever" and "incredibly unprofessional" even though our contracts are at-will, meaning you can be fired with a day's notice without them having to give a reason and the handbook only requires 1 day's notice of leave, though recommends 2 weeks. This is just one example of the verbal abuse I received while working at AF.

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Achievement First Response
4y
Thank you for sharing this experience. This was incredibly difficult to read - and what you describe is far from our expectations of what we'd want anyone to experience at Achievement First. If you're interested, please reach out to me at KristenNielson@AchievementFirst.org so that I can learn more about your experience.

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Cons

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