Pros
XQ is part of the Emerson Collective, which comes with great health insurance and perks. If you are the type of person who likes staying in the know, this will also be a great benefit. XQ also offers competitive compensation. Some of the people are incredibly brilliant at what they do.
Cons
XQ is more like a vanity project run by one or two people at the top than a functioning non-profit. No matter what department you work in, what role you have, you will work on something that either gets killed a month after you've put your sweat and tears into it or witness it morph into something else entirely out of your control that you know will fail. The best you can hope for is that your project fades into oblivion. You will work on unnecessarily crazy deadlines, due to the fact that none of the managers can agree to keep to a process or pipeline. And the higher up you are the in chain, the more likely you are to be dressed down publicly in front of your colleagues. While some people will call this the price of great work, it is more often the price of poor planning. XQ respects expertise very little internally, instead opting to turn to big names and celebrities for promotion. The organization tends to push projects toward grandiosity instead of humble, effective ideas. Teams that are the backbone of the educational part of XQ are under resourced and kept in the background. Collaboration between teams is almost non-existent due to the chaotic nature of the projects. Nepotism is rampant and will get you farther than any skill or passion you have. There is no process for advancement in your career, unless your manager actually cares about you, which a few good ones do.
