A very bureaucratic organization with no upward mobility
Pros
Honestly, the name is amazing. I was constantly in awe of the fact that I worked at Human Rights Watch.
Cons
You would be amazed how much money, talent, and opportunity a poorly managed organization can waste. Easiest way to tell? HRW has an $80 million operating budget. Try to think of how on earth that kind of money could be effectively used by a team of less than 500 people. *I worked in a satellite office, so many of the following concerns might not apply if you get a job in New York.* If you're support staff, you will not have work-life balance. You will probably not be trained effectively, you'll be thrown into the deep end, you'll have a to-do list that gets longer and not shorter, you will have difficulty navigating an organization that is massive, bureaucratic, siloh'd, and suffering from consistent turnover. You might even work underneath someone who has no business managing. Additionally, the support staff has a formal union, which I would consider a red flag; if an organization treated their employees fairly, there wouldn't need to be a union. Support staff doesn't have upward mobility; promotions and raises are non-negotiably every two years; and your salary will be difficult to live on.
