The Gaslight in Me Honors the Light in You - Anonymous employee Knack Collective Employee Review

There has been some effort to discredit the negative reviews here by posting 4 and 5 star reviews, which paint unhappy employees as “bad apples”. Therefore, I will avoid vagueness and just relay my actual lived experience. Here are just a few experiences that I had while working at Knack: As a response to the chronic burnout and rapid fire resignations, the CEO encouraged us in an All-Hands meeting to “prioritize your well-being” and “talk to your manager about taking time off”. A few days later, my request for time off was declined. I was asked if I could “be flexible” because we were “short staffed” (as the mass exodus from Knack had already begun). I was finally allowed to take time off after calling it “a formal request for mental health sick days” in writing. I worked on a multi-million dollar program for a high visibility tech company based locally. The work we produced was worse than garbage. For several months, I received emails from clients with complaints such as, “we have been partners with [TECH COMPANY] for 20+ years, and this is the worst marketing campaign we have ever participated in” and “your company has misled me” and “Does [TECH COMPANY] know about your sketchy marketing tactics? I will be sending a formal complaint to [TECH COMPANY] to make sure they know”. For months, I escalated these legitimate complaints and I was given no guidance from leadership. After several months of 60+ hour weeks and raising my hand several times for help, I broke down and cried in a 1:1 with my manager. My manager said “don’t worry, all the Project Managers have cried to me at least once this week”. This did not make me feel better. 25-30% of Knack’s employees quit or went on extended leave of absence between January-April 2021. When I put in my resignation, one team member encouraged me to “talk about [REDACTED] in your exit interview, and save the rest of us”. I discovered that a white, male peer whom I trained(!!!) made a significant higher salary than I did for working on the same program for the same client. When I escalated this to my manager and HR, my requests for equal pay for equal work were ignored, despite our job titles, workload, quality of work, and responsibilities being equal. Directly after this, I was given a $5,000 bonus, which I thought was weird, since I had asked for a raise (systemic change). I now realize this was part of the cycle of abuse that Knack perpetuates — first, injustice. Next, a spot bonus. But never any meaningful change to policies.