Because there is such high turnover at Hotwire, accounts are not structured properly. Suddenly every account has a project manager instead of an account manager, and the typical roles & responsibilities of the account managers falls on the more junior employees. The lines of roles & responsibilities are constantly being blurred because of this, and you could end up consistently doing the work slated for a role two positions above you, while being underpaid to do so.
Hotwire also brags about the ability to grow into different focus areas within the comms space, like content, social media, or influencer relations, but seldom provides assistance in helping you get there, and will instead hire a contractor than use their current employees, knowing those are projects they would like to work on.
The promotion process is shady - there are some people who get promoted twice in one year, meanwhile there are others who go 2+ years in the same position. The criteria upon which they base promotions on is completely unclear. You could be an Associate, but they will ask you to take on the responsibilities of an Account Manager, without giving you a raise or promoting you. If you are slacking proactive ideas and articles 24/7 you will get promoted 3 times in 2 years, meanwhile if you are busy actually doing the same redundant tasks assigned to you every week which your accounts absolutely cannot function without, you will be criticized for not being “proactive” and prevented from ever being promoted. Promotions seem to be based more on “optics” and “visibility” rather than based on the actual work being done.
There is a lack of equity of work/life balance at Hotwire. Some people are able to go for a walk, go to the gym, and run errands in the middle of the day, while others are working 10-hour days, with 5-hour blocks of calls on their calendars. Leadership is aware of this, but has done little to remedy the situation, especially for junior employees. But truthfully, this issue is not limited to just junior employees, as the majority of Hotwire employees are overworked and completely burned out, which is why everyone is jumping ship to go in-house. They continue to take on new business, meanwhile, there are people who are already on 6 accounts and drowning. You cannot boast about work/life balance being one of the premiere perks of working at Hotwire when you have people still online at 1 am or starting their day at 6 am to work on on client facing materials.
Hotwire’s DE&I strategy was a complete sham, unsurprisingly short-lived, and every person of color at the company is rolling their eyes behind the scenes. The monthly calls that Hotwire spent so much time and money to organize fell flat and didn’t really focus on the pertinent issues at hand. The only call that seemed to capture everyone’s attention was the final call hosted by the therapist who discussed burnout, and when she began to list the symptoms of burnout, depression, and anxiety, everyone commented on how they were feeling on average at least 7 out of 10 of those symptoms. Even employees who had only been there about three months were experiencing symptoms of burnout. There still remains few people of color at the executive level, and they continue to hire people of color at the junior level, but seldom do they get promoted.
