I have to imagine that the 5-star reviews given here were left by people belonging to one or more of these groups:
• People incentivized to leave positive reviews by management;
• Senior leadership patting themselves on the back; or
• Rank-and file employees who have only ever worked in toxic workplaces and have become acclimated to them, like the proverbial boiling frog.
If you work here, know that you will never, ever be fairly compensated for your work. Corners are cut at every opportunity, including salary. Workloads were so heavy and the approvals pipeline is so slow and archaic that the desire to innovate is ground down to nothing. The "good cause" you're working towards is weaponized against you in order to pile more onto your plate. You will be questioned when you want time off, and you will do double the work when you return.
The company pulls in more than $10 million dollars annually. From working there, you'd never know it. There is the pretense of financial transparency, but the figures are framed so as to hide the sum total. I can only imagine what the Executive Director/CEO/wax figurehead squirrels away.
Your performance does not matter to anyone above you, unless it is bad, in which case you will be let go. Many coworkers burned themselves out and lost all will to work, but still needing health insurance, they kept going until they were fired.
Mind you, their drops in performance were not their fault and could have been prevented, had the company cared a single ounce for their humanity. But HR did not exist. Two HR employees left within 3 months of each other and there were no other HR employees. For five dozen employees, 1 HR staffer. Your personal well-being does not matter at all to them. Remember: cut corners.
It is cliche to say that a workplace is "cliquey," and can often be read as an employee feeling personally spurned by the rest of their colleagues. But reading other reviews, it seems pretty safe to say that there is a group of approximately 8-10 long-term employees that will always put themselves and their happiness above your emotional and professional well-being. Your ceiling is as high as they will let you go. This many people saying there's a problem means there is a serious problem.
After looking at the "Our Team" page recently, out of 60 employees, only 29 of them have been there longer than a year. Unless major changes occur, by next year I expect that number to be at 20 or less.
I say this without bitterness, without anger, and, actually, with a small amount of fear of retribution: Do not let yourself be thrown into this wood chipper. You deserve better.