Despite its amazing mission, the reality of working at Seattle Children's is frustrating at best and downright toxic at worst.
Leadership likes to talk a big game of "flipping the triangle" and promoting a culture of "bottom up" management. It's all a sham though, and in the last year of my employment I watched as leadership routinely dismissed reports of bullying, harassment, and retaliation by silencing victims and protecting those who repeatedly preyed on peers and subordinates. HR investigations were kept in-house versus being sourced out, leading to inadequate outcomes where victims received payout settlements and the door while predators and enablers were given promotions and bonuses.
I also watched as money was spent recklessly on projects that would be abandoned midway, or produce little to no return on investment. If someone would raise concerns over seeing this and offer up alternatives, they were chastised and silenced by leadership and painted as being a difficult employee.
Add to this toxic mess, a patriarchal c-level suite that has continued to promote and install friends into leadership positions and then protect them from fall-out when they prove to be inept at their job. It's a culture where you have to scrape and claw your way to the top, and where schmoozing and buzzwords mean more than performance and ethics.
Combine all this with extremely low pay for entry level and mid-career professionals, it's no wonder you have rolls and rolls of unfilled positions. There are very few perks in away of fringe benefits. Insane parking costs at the expense of already underpaid employees. A time-off system where you have to accrue holidays along with sick time and vacation into one pot. For new employees this often means forgoing many holidays with family because you only get 9 days of vacation a year when you take out observed holidays (which have to be accrued) and the bare minimum of legally required sick time.
