Austin Opera reviews

LEADERSHIP - Leadership is dishonest. - There are very few policies and procedures in place. - Staff turnover rate is abnormally high, but leadership refuses to address the issue and take responsibility for it. - Staff is overworked and undervalued. The organization is severely understaffed for the crazy ideas and workload. Leadership takes advantage of the best employees, burning them out and forcing them to leave. - No accountability for anyone. There are never evaluations of staff, very poor planning and no follow-up process to ensure projects are being taken care of in a timely fashion by the right people, no repercussions for not staying on-task. - Little to no communication. Lots of gossip, no professional means of communicating important information to staff. - Inconsistent in hiring practices. For a single role, one person could be overqualified and when they get frustrated and leave, leadership might fill their role with someone with little to no qualifications. When staff is leaving every few months and there are no standards that leadership adhere to, it makes for a highly inconsistent product. - Leadership lets board members be over-involved. - Overall lack of professionalism. STAFF - Half of the staff is hardworking and cares, while longtime staff have never been evaluated to make their jobs relevant in the modern, downsized workplace. Turnover rate is extremely high because new staff want to help and end up getting burned out because they have no support and leadership overlooks their efforts. - The board and leadership have their favorites on staff. These people are not touchable, despite their lack of contribution to advancing the company. - A lot of negativity. Staff spends more time gossipping and complaining about the company than doing work. - No sense of teamwork. Everybody fends for themselves. - No training or onboarding process for staff. Regardless of the level of experience a new staff member has, that person is pretty much on their own from day one. ENVIRONMENT - Negative, oppressive. - High stress. - As fast-paced as an individual staffer makes it, because there are no standards for work quality and leadership lacks knowledge to understand what staff members job duties are. - Offices in poor condition, old and unreliable equipment. BOARD - The board is probably the biggest issue. There are an outspoken few who overpower the entire board and micromanage daily operations of the staff.

-Board micromanages staff and is very vocal about their low opinions of staff members' worth and expertise (this is expressed repeatedly, in front of staff or even in front of donors where it is extremely inappropriate and demeaning), so staff morale is consistently low and the organization has a lot of turnover and burnout. -Management and the board do not trust staff to do their jobs and are very condescending, no management support of staff when it comes to board members. -The organization fires at least one person per season or per calendar year, making job security and confidence non-existent (new ideas aren't expressed when everyone always operates under the guise of keeping their head down to keep from getting fired). -Very High Stress environment, no prioritization, i.e. everything is top priority all the time. Management lacks focus so one is constantly running from one emergency situation to the next rather than an organized approach to performing your job duties. -Revolving door in Development and Marketing departments because of unrealistic expectations and too few staff members in each department. In addition, board and staff do not work together to achieve stated revenue goals (the opposite is usually the successful industry standard in the nonprofit sector), there is a very huge disconnect. -Board is more interested in hokey marketing tactics like flash mobs and small social medial events that result in minor traffic (and traffic is usually from people who already support the opera) and few of these efforts actually result in increased ticket sales or increased donations from new patrons or donors. -Not a family friendly working environment (unless you have a spouse who doesn't work or full-time live-in nanny), erratic schedule, and bad work-life balance. So if you have children, don't expect to get to see them (or your spouse) and to be admonished if you express concern about this issue. -Little attention is paid to actually making an effort to be part of the community with outreach or public engagement, education/outreach are seen as a burden rather than a necessary component of being a nonprofit in the Austin community. So little attention is paid to this area of the company and it shows. Ask most people in Austin and they're not even aware there's an opera company in Austin (for a company that's been around for 30 years). -Board is convinced no one in Austin is capable so they hire people from out of state, who have no local connections, yet they are expected to raise a lot of money in a short amount of time despite their lack of local connections. In addition, out-of-town recruits have no warning about this organization. -Inefficiencies everywhere (software, staff practices) and resistance to change of any kind in donor/board recruitment, marketing, fundraising, or community outreach.