Pros
I worked for PETA for several years in a few different departments, and my experience varied widely. I had what I'd call a hybrid career spending about half my time in an office and half remote. I felt my best when I had the opportunity to educate people one-on-one rather than sit behind a desk/work remotely, and luckily the last years of my career were full of outreach.
Cons
PETA has a massive variety of different positions for different skill sets, but a common thread between workers (who are agitated in many different departments) is the feeling of working for an animal rights organization that forgets that you too, are an animal.
Despite years of work, I never once made a living wage, every relatively meager pay raise was quickly eaten by inflation. PETA's President prides herself on living on barely more than $35,000 a year, but I think that has sadly set the tone for what she expects her employees to survive on, employees who obviously have a wide range of backgrounds, family size and varying financial need. I was surprised to find out from friends and fellow activists that other smaller animal rights organizations pay more in comparative positions.
The thread of a very few senior PETA veterans dictating the actions of the org, signing off on things as minute as leaflet language has made the organization stagnate. Instead of working with other organizations toward total liberation, leadership has developed a pattern of keeping PETA mostly isolated, even from other animal rights organizations, and generally don't bother to take stances on other rights movements in meaningful ways. Think of the phrase “I'm not racist, I don't see race.” that is the perspective PETA takes on other rights movements largely to avoid losing donor money, by maintaining political neutrality at all costs.
Leadership believes that "all press is good press", but I think undeniably bad press has troubled the organization for decades at this point. On the subject, so much work is poured into convincing the public that the euthanasia it conducts at its shelter of last resort is a necessary evil, when PETA could avoid running a shelter altogether and instead divert those funds to a wider spay/neuter initiative.
Working at PETA they almost seem to preach about themselves to staff. Staff meetings are grueling, monthly, mandatory exercises. They're developed for donors so they understandably have an exclusively positive bent, but forcing staff to watch felt like overkill, I often found myself thinking "we're here, we believe in the mission of the organization, we can read about these highlights/watch them on peta.org, who is this for?"
I have watched the two most active members of the fledgling organizing committee aimed at unionizing PETA, be fired by PETA’s leadership. The first one let's call him Steve was fired prior to my knowledge of the union then sued PETA through the National Labor Relations Board for his job back which he continues to have as of writing this. Karol another bright, committed young activist and organizer was fired in fall of 2024. Up until now I've been relatively judicious in my criticisms, but I'm going to call this behavior what it is, scummy. Any organization that claims to care about rights of any nature, while actively doing what is in my opinion, union busting, is hypocritical.