Pros
+ Fantastic (yet still highly homogenous) group of people that even today still flock to the company based on brand, school affiliation or the promise of a few shiny case-studies.
Cons
- Leadership that is excited to become a top-level management consultancy on a design consultancy budget. - No opportunities for growth for individual contributors, who are excited about exercising their craft. - Projects that require talent to work on client site 4+ days of the week, evaporating all benefits of being in a studio environment, that are used in salary negotiations as one of the main reasons for lower compensation. - Mostly non-inspirational clients, with the occasional interesting project that gets assigned to the same set of people who are a part of “the clique” . - Massive lack of diversity across all levels of the company, caused by obvious misguided hiring practices (favouring the ever-same schools). Reinforced in the London studio due to mis- (or non-)managed HR that leads to hiring through existing (homogenous) networks. Change has been promised for years, but has not materialised.