Poorly run agency w/ bad leadership and toxic culture - Associate Mosaic Strategies Employee Review

I spent nearly two years at Mosaic and learned so many lessons. Don’t buy into the “values” they talk about so much, as they’re non-existent in practice. (Really the whole business is smoke and mirrors and no one knows what they are doing.) They almost exclusively hire very junior talent, which works to their advantage, as most aren’t equipped to speak up when treated unfairly or question why their pay is so grossly low. The high turnover at such a small agency was shocking; in my two years I witnessed at least 8 people leaving - more than half of whom were unfairly fired with no real explanation. That’s a lot for an agency of ~20, including leadership. The culture was toxic and secretive, which only got worse when they acquired another boutique agency. One of the partners, my boss, would make me cry most weeks. There was never any communication or process in place, and everyday was a new fire drill put on not by clients, but leadership. I wondered what the odds were that all three partners had narcissism; it seemed statistically impossible but each of them were so out of touch it was the only logical explanation. I never knew what state my boss would be in that day or if they’d have an impossible task for me to inevitably fail at. My mental health suffered as I gaslit myself everyday for so long. I thankfully got out and discovered I could be making $35K more a year than I was, in addition to having a great boss and actual resources to thrive, at an agency that cares about their staff… but I’m still unlearning a lot of what Mosaic did to my sense of self worth.