This company is not run by serious people. Leave if you can!! - Anonymous Morning Consult Employee Review

Office Culture: Changing in a bad way This company--to its credit--has grown tremendously in the last few years. At the same time though, their actions during this time period have shown me that not only is this company not run by serious people, its also shown me that the company doesn't quite know what to make of itself in the future. The past few months have seen a LOT of discourse around returning to office work. This has happened industry wide, and shouldn't really come as a shock with Covid-19 restrictions going away and CEOs wanting their rent towards office spaces to be worth something. BUT, this company hired me as well as well as a majority of its current staff during the worst of the pandemic. Many, many people work across time zones and states, and literally cannot commute to one of our 3 offices in Washington DC, Chicago, or New York City. San Francisco had an office, but that was closed last year. So now all of our employees west of the Rockies aren't even a few states away from the closest office. Newer employees and job postings seem to only list hybrid jobs, so I imagine in the coming months if you don't live in one of the 3 cities listed above and you want to work here, your application might get considered less over someone who can commute in. Long term, it has yet to be determined if the company will eventually give up on getting people back to the office, or slowly fire those who are unwilling to/cannot go to an office. Or if there will be return to office forced, but only on certain staff on certain teams within certain metro areas? The culture in offices is poor, and I don't know if the C-Suite and upper management pushing people to go back will fix the rot underneath coming from employee morale. Employee Morale: Lowest its ever been This has been getting worse and worse the years I've been here, and the glassdoor reviews reflect this. There were layoffs to start the year in 2023, with promises of role clarity amid restructuring to follow. Flash forward to 2024 and role clarity is STILL in discussion, another wave of layoffs started the year (restructure to the restructure), and timelines have again shifted in around promotion. Variable compensation bonus dispensation have varied widely across teams, with the data division (the team which works directly with the data that makes the company money) not receiving any bonuses until last year. Meanwhile other teams have been getting bonus payouts for years. This compensation last year was based on client retention (which was too small by their standards to award money, so everyone missed out on half their potential bonus) and company growth rate (which while we did grow some, we didn't meet the goal rate of 35 PERCENT, so everyone missed out on more money). When this goal of 35% growth was announced early 2023, everyone rolled their eyes since we all live in the real world and know that companies, especially in market research, don't grow like that. But the C-Suite wouldn't let that figure go until the end of the year. These constant layoffs mixed with unclear messages from management make it so that each department has a steady trickle of people quitting, and I say more power to them. Entire teams were cut (including many employees handling DEIC events, showing where their priorities around diversity lie), and as every company is getting some AI tool to help seem hip and cool, Morning Consult wants to do the same. Which is all well and good, but then there was also an upper management choice to fire half our engineers last month? The folks who are left who would likely build this new AI tool are now worried about their job future and probably won't do it at the pace the C-Suite wants. The executives want the growth of a 1000+ employee company operating with under 400 people, and it won't be sustainable long term. Salary: Probably won't change after getting hired Salary bands were shared along with "role clarity" in 2023, and it was a nice change to have that information be available company wide. However, this company is VERY stingy with dispensing merit based increases and giving promotions (shocking when many people higher up in the company have either been laid off or quit). Be prepared to NEGOTIATE the heck out of your salary because when you get a final number, you may be at that number for years! A new cycle of promotions has been locked in for this calendar year, but given how upper management tried and failed to settle on a system for routine promotions before 2024, I don't have faith in them to get this right before 2025 (if ever). Our hiring team LOVES to say that we bring people in at the midpoint of roles, but then unless you manage to get a promotion, you'll likely never leave that spot on your pay band, all while inflation goes up and your amount of work increases because everyone keeps quitting or getting fired. It is not uncommon to have peers in your department who have done the same work for multiple years and even take on more work NOT get any adjustment in compensation despite growing responsibilities.