I ALMOST chose this job over love - Executive Assistant Chromatic (IL) Employee Review

The team is made up of genuinely good people who want to do their very best work and will go out of their way to help you when you need it. Leadership is transparent, humble, and level-headed. I’ve seen them put team members above profit many times.

Like many agencies, the quality of the projects can vary significantly.

The three partners and owners actually care about work/life balance to a degree that tendrils out into many other facets of the company. This is so often overused and abused in the industry that it is hard to say this and not get eyerolls from people in the industry. Caring about the humans in the company has lead to firing clients/not signing new contracts despite their importance to company income. The company matches charitable donations, bolsters good financial habits and community involvement (even when it takes away from billing hours), and earnestly strives to be aware/present/awake. These perks-for-the-soul are hard to advertise and express without seeing first-hand — as well as their beneficial effects first-hand! Working here is about doing good work (as their motto professes) and having a good life outside of work. Company finances are solid, transparent, and far-future-reaching in terms of planning.

This caring for work/life balances translates to a lack of competitive salaries. The salary board is flat/even, meaning those used to outrageous and competitive benefits/salary packages might look at Chromatic's offers as laughable. A relatively young company striving to be diverse but hitting a wall at exactly how to do this without being patronizing — this is a weak con (in my opinion) as one needs to balance talent and the desire of the pool of resources. Pair this with lower to mid-low end (in the context of our industry) salary offers and lack of publicity around meta-benefits (donations, casual attendance, perks, etc.) and on paper, the company can sometimes come off as "not trying hard enough". This isn't to say all the faces are CIS while males. This is not the company for you if you are trying to make a ton of money fast and get paid to eat fancy meals at conferences/meetings. In a way, this "spreading of wealth" means no one gets rich at the top.