Pros
There are some good people working there. You can meet some really terrific and interesting L and D professionals and they are always willing to help even after your time at ATD. Eventually you can get out and find a better place to work than ATD.
Kontras
The five-star reviews are all fake and likely forced by ATD leadership. The real rating is grossly inflated by these fake reviews. The reality is ATD is a toxic dumpster fire that does nothing for developing talent, if anything it does the exact opposite to most of the staff and creates misery all around. In other words, the association that promotes developing people and talent is allergic to developing their own staff and loathe to pay competitive wages. The CEO is a wannabe cult leader and dictator who expects everyone to follow his word because he thinks he’s a “tech CEO” (reality: ATD is an association nobody outside the industry cares about). The culture is beyond toxic with reorganizations every other year for no real reason. The turnover is extremely high and it’s hard to know who has what role after a year or two. One or two senior leaders are good and helpful (usually the good ones are pushed out within a short period of time). The rest act like the CEO’s puppets trying to win a high school popularity contest. ATD is an awful mix mediocrity, micromanagement, favoritism, and backstabbing all rolled together. Pay is ridiculously uncompetitive and usually the turnover allows for positions and pay to be downgraded (likely the ATD “talent strategy”).