Pros
First and foremost, the people. However many complaints you'll read here about management, they've clearly done something right because the vast majority of the staff you'll interact with here are friendly, passionate, fun and engaging. The success of the organisation is down to its collaborative, teamwork-oriented nature. Second, and by no means any less important, is the fact that CDP does have a theory of how to make change happen and demonstrated how. There are very few charities out there that can point to the kind of results CDP has generated in achieving its goals. It makes working here satisfying, and goes to explain why many staff are so committed and stay a long time.
Cons
Yes, the wages aren't great. But that's offset (at the start at least) by the pros of working here. Despite being champions of transparency in the business world, this clearly does not apply internally. The organisation appears unwilling to communicate to staff information about pay grades and promotions. Annual pay rises hover around the 1 - 2% mark, and 4% if you've performed well. It advertises a 10% annual bonus scheme, but this is rarely met. The other con is that because it is a successful and growing organisation, working there can sometimes feel a bit chaotic. There is some truth in what the very negative review below said about CDP being involved in too many side projects, and sometimes it can seem like it's losing sight of its end goals/bigger picture. Maybe management are on top of this. But what this means for most employees is that you will be doing a ton of work in a frenzied manner. There is a lot of obvious burnout as a consequence. And yes, there is a lot of low-level sexism visible here. To pretend otherwise is just naive. Many men, and indeed some women, who work here will brush this off with the comment that there is apparent gender balance. But that ignores the everyday sexism staff experience here. The organisation would go a long way if it genuinely listened to and learned from the experiences of its staff rather than having (mostly male) management tell employees that what they experienced can't be true because they (the man) haven't experienced it. No organisation has got gender equality or diversity/representation right. It's sad that this is the case in 2017. But the sadder truth is that it will continue to be the case for many decades to come if an organisation like CDP can't even be bothered to engage on this issue at a very basic level.