Pros
I got to meet some celebrities
Cons
Professional Working at The Paley Center will seem like a job opportunity too good to be true; an advancement to a role of your dreams. A thrilling enticement to leave the hard-earned respect and job security you've enjoyed in favor of a small but mighty role that can have great impact on the organization. In reality, you will be set up to fail. On Day 1, you are the magic bullet to fix all systemic problems that hold the organization back from success. On Day 2, you will be seen as part of the problem. Quickly you'll learn to not innovate but to merely execute the same top-down flawed strategies. This will not only make you question your own instincts on a daily basis, but impede your professional growth and ability to think strategically and creatively. Your sentence at Paley will be wasted time, every day there will make you less prepared for the next job you interview for. Financial Paley pays well, because it must. HR, at the iron directive of senior management, create a shock-and-awe style of recruiting. You may say to yourself that you never thought you'd earn this much money, and you may be right. But at what cost. You will leave dejected and confused with no job lined up. Or you will be summarily dismissed, silenced, and erased for irreconcilable crimes against the matriarchy. Either way, assume that any annualized salary calculation should factor in not 12 months but 18 - 21 months, including the 6-9 months looking for a job that you should've taken in the first place. Mental Never have i ever cried at work. Never have I ever seen kind, talented, dedicated colleagues be verbally executed and fired in a public setting. Never have I ever thrown something across the room in frustration. Never have i ever had recurring nightmares about my CEO. Never have I ever been truly speechless at a person's inhumane narcissism. Never have I ever seen an organization so riddled with turnover that every year is like recreating the wheel with new people and no continuity to the point of sheer ineffectiveness and madness. Social A silver lining will be the strong bonds you form with peers, akin to carpet-bombed soldiers in a foxhole. There will be an espirit de corps that you'll learn to lean into: knowing that C-suite exectives have no downward loyalty and focus only on their own two-faced survival at all costs. The goals will be unattainable, the direction will be contradictary, and the business model will be a dumpster fire, but its about the people you meet along the way. The people, like you, that have looked evil in the face and refused to blink.