Insecure micromanagement and poor leadership and management skills among the top ranks.
Pros
Well-paying roles (assuming they pay equitably, which I doubt) The lure of well-funded programs Competent and thoughtful junior and senior (excluding mgmt) colleagues. Compelling ideas and strategies (yet left unrealized in so many ways). Nice, high-visibility offices.
Cons
Huge, in fact massive, inconsistency between what they say and what they actually do. The org is built to elevate the top 1 or 2 senior people at the expense of developing or supporting anyone else in the organization. The president is continuously distracted rather than focused on the big picture objective. Often this involves micromanaging individual employees, rather than delegating responsibility to his team. Very little ownership is given to anyone in the org. The organization's values are inconsistent with practice. As an example, the employee handbook is rife with inconsistencies and factual errors aimed at justifying decisions that suit the head of the organization. The leadership is generally incompetent when it comes to systems that would support staff productivity or development. Only one person makes decisions of consequence. It's usually an uphill battle for even that to happen, and the decisions don't tend to be very good as a result. Limited input from different methods or ways of doing things. They take a social marketing approach and fail to see any downside or trade-offs, fail to account for different ways to reach the same goal, and generally discount the value of anyone's experience but their own. Leadership is not particularly diverse financially, experience-wise, ethnically, or in terms of worldview.