Lots of really smart people, toxic and unsafe culture - Administrative Assistant Carnegie Foundation Employee Review

- For an organization that claims to be a leader in iterative improvement, leadership is *extremely* stuck in their ways. Their stubbornness inconveniences staff at all levels - from senior-level people who are just trying to get alignment before moving forward on a project, to the assistants who have to schedule meetings on top of meetings because execs cannot come to reasonable agreement in a timely fashion. The male leadership needs more babysitting than seems normal or healthy; women are hired into assistant positions and expected to herd their bosses from one meeting to the next, often needing to repeat themselves multiple times and use desperate tactics just to get their bosses to budge and move on to the next meeting. Leaders insist on scheduling more meetings for themselves AND others than any human can realistically attend. It's laughed off as basically the corporate version of "boys will be boys." - The biggest con and most important point I want to make is that the workplace culture, at least when I was there, is toxic, predatory, and gaslighting. A laundry list of things I personally experienced during my time at the Foundation: - Sexual harassment and manipulation by a much older, Director-level coworker - Being let go on the pretense of the needs of my role having changed, but hearing it suggested off the record that it was because of the situation with this coworker (of course they couldn't fire him) - The week before being fired, I was told "Don't worry. Your job is not in danger." Maybe this is typical practice as anything verbal is non-binding - but it came from someone whom I trusted. - Being harassed outside of work hours by my direct manager after leaving work at 6pm, leaving a small project partly unfinished with a note that I would complete it in the morning. Being forced to return to the empty office in the dead of night to finish. Having my manager prod into my personal life while grilling me on why I would dare to leave my 9-5 job at 6pm. - Having my older, married, male boss peer down my blouse and then suggest that I button an extra button. If you have to look down my shirt to see cleavage, my shirt is buttoned high enough. On a different occasion, my direct manager sent me home for wearing a skirt she deemed too short (HR was not looped in to this decision). The body shaming and humiliation was real and came from both men and women. - A few weeks/months into the job (which was my first job out of college), a female coworker not on my team sent me an email about my email signature and copied my manager. I had mistakenly mixed up my job title with another title that (to my newbie eyes) was equivalent. Her email: "The title in your signature is actually a much higher position than what you do. Please change it." Other catty microaggressions, specifically from female coworkers, occurred from time to time. It's been a while since I left this terrible place. I'm choosing to air these grievances now, 1) Because I want to warn young girls contemplating a career here that you may be body policed, degraded in subtle ways, and possibly even be subject to sexually predatory behavior. 2) Because I STILL remember things that happened at the Foundation and become incredibly anxious, sad, and self-doubting. Was it all my fault after all? But after talking to friends and coworkers in my current, supportive and awesome job - they are HORRIFIED when I tell them stories of what occurred at the Foundation. So while I was not perfect (I *did* genuinely have some performance issues - it was my first job, and the learning curve was steep) I now understand that the treatment I experienced at this place was completely out of line and was negatively affecting my mental health. I have a lot of regrets about staying as long as I did, and being too naive to stand up for myself in any of the situations listed above.