The Trevor Project Reviews

When I started working at Trevor, I was so excited. It had been a dream of mine to work there for many years. I read a bunch of bad reviews on GlassDoor, but tried to tell myself it was just a few people who were bitter about their experiences. I was so wrong. As it turns out, Trevor is a horrible place to work— or at least the digital side of things are awful. (I've been told that the people who work for the Lifeline have no idea how bad things are on the digital side, so it's possible that it's much better to work for The Lifeline.) The counselors and supervisors are beyond overworked, and burnout is stunningly high. Counselors frequently find themselves alone on shifts, and because of this, they routinely end up keeping callers in crisis waiting for as many as three hours. The higher-ups do not seem to value their employee's mental health, despite this being an organization dedicated, in large part, to mental health issues. Trevor lost nearly 3/4 of its digital counselors within a year of hiring the first cohort. That just doesn't happen unless something is very wrong indeed. The CEO doesn't interact with people lower down on the rung at all, and if you address concerns to him, he will simply patch you through to other people. The digital counselors and supervisors are overwhelmed, and their concerns are swept under the rug. I wanted so much to stay because the work is so important, but working here was incredibly stressful. Don't ignore these negative reviews you're seeing like I did. At least when it comes to the digital side of things, I'm very sad to say that Trevor is a horrendous place to work. (As a side note, volunteers for Trevor do not have this same miserable experience. It is primarily the paid digital counselors who are so unhappy.) Trevor is known primarily for its wonderful work as a crisis hotline and chat line, and yet it treats its very counselors— the people doing this lifesaving work— like garbage.

I had the realization yesterday that what makes working at Trevor different is I truly have never been at a workplace where I feel my coworkers and leadership don't have the capacity to care about me. Arrogance, cruelty, and condescending attitudes run rampant at this organization, starting with Amit Paley to Peggy Rajski. It trickles down in ugly ways. Even amidst layoffs at other organizations, I still felt my coworkers had a basic decency in the day to day. Here, there is a hollowness unlike anywhere else I have worked in my career. Trust is broken. The culture is broken. And there isn't a willingness to have difficult conversations to fix it.