Bad environment, poor project management and very low pay. - Anonymous employee Laidlaw Group Employee Review

Work and Management - The management more-or-less consists solely of the company founder. They have a small set of existing clients and the founder spends most of her time trying to work her personal connections in hopes of acquiring new clients. There is no project management, sales, hr, or "marketing" to speak of. The majority of employees are designers and developers fresh out of college. Despite selling websites, SEO optimization and mobile web services, management has no in-depth knowledge about any of the subjects beyond a memorization of superficial buzzwords. Projects are assigned to employees with -set and often unrealistic deadlines. Scope is subject to change at a customer's whim, yet despite additional feature demands or unforeseen technical obstacles, deadlines are never adjusted to compensate. Work-life Balance - Since deadlines remain locked, the primary strategy to meet said deadlines is to demand working late into the night. Compensation for this extra time is neither offered nor given. All employees are expected to be on-call 24 hours a day and be able to abandon any personal plans or obligations to meet any sort of customer request, feature addition or unrealistic demand. Request for time off, even when approved, can still be rejected, even within days of the scheduled vacation. The work-life balance can be summed up as sacrificing all of "life" for the sake of "work." Salary - Salary is well below industry standard. There are no performance reviews, no raises, no cost-of-living increases, no commission plan, nor any bonus structure. Benefits - Benefits are non-existent. As mentioned before, there is no bonus structure, no perks, no vacation plan structure nor a plan for sick days. Healthcare is bare minimum, and like most other aspects of the company, is handled incompetently. There was an instance where an employee submitted the paperwork for healthcare coverage, however the form was never submitted or processed and the employee went uncovered. Overall Company - The way the Laidlaw Group brands itself is misleading, if not outright false. Their website touts a list of companies, implying that they are all clients of the agency. However, many are simply companies the founder worked for during her days when she worked at an ad agency. They offer SEO optimization services for an up charge, however the strategies they implement haven't been relevant since the early 2000s. There have been many meeting trying to "optimize" meta tags for keywords and descriptions and finding ways to get links to their sites. They charge high-end prices for their websites and marketing services, but really deliver a sub-par product to unsuspecting clients. The company presents itself as a high-caliber, multimedia marketing/ad agency. But behind this mask, it only hangs together due to the talents of the under-appreciated and unrespected employees performing beyond their roles. I would definitely not recommend working for the Laidlaw Group, even if it's just a way to get experience for someone just starting their career, or a stopgap to try to make ends meat. Do yourself a favor and try apply to any of the other hundred design/development/marketing jobs in the greater Boston area. You'll save yourself a lot of stress and give yourself a better shot at earning some money.