Stepford Wives meets Mean Girls - Anonymous employee Vanguard Charitable Endowment Employee Review

The title should give you an idea of the culture. The company is image obsessed and expects an odd sort of cookie cutter personality from their employees which means (mostly) white women from middle or upper class backgrounds generally with husbands in high paying jobs and all must smile non-stop and pretend that everything is always going 100% perfectly or the managers will come after you. For all the expected pleasantries, the environment is catty and favoritism and gossip is rampant among managers. They tend to avoid firing people and will instead make your life miserable enough to quit if they don’t like you. While the barest perception of disagreement or slight to a manager or favored employee will get a lower level employee raked over the coals, managers and favored employees are often bullies and nasty with no consequence and no one will ever believe you if you report them. The high net worth group dumps their work off on everyone else, often without asking if their coworker has capacity or knows anything about the work, and if you protest, you will, again, be raked over the coals. HR exists to back managers and is generally of no help. Much of the staff is expected to work long, demanding hours, especially in the busy season at the end of the year. As another review said, training is not great due to disorganization among management and the fact that many managers have no idea how the department they’re running works. Emblematic of the overall issues, a major project was pushed forward at the busiest time of year despite most employees knowing the software was not working and would cause major problems because the culture made everyone too afraid to raise the concerns and suggest delaying the project. Overall, the place has been miserable to work for to the point of being actively detrimental to my health.