Pros
The creative team members are some of the most talented designers I've had the pleasure of working with. They have a hunger for growth and knowledge that makes sharing skills and inspiration come really naturally. The accounts team is super good at what they do. They're always open to help and talk through client feedback, making them a lot more collaborative than account leads may be in other agency settings.
Cons
The company culture is promoted as "family-like", which is just a guise for a lack of boundaries, nepotism, and manipulation. The company CEO and CFO are husband and wife, and the COO is the CEO's sister. These three go through title changes more than anyone else at the company, all of which hold no meaning (ex. Chief Evangelist, Chief Accountability Officer). A lot of their clients are "buddies" of the CEO, and there is very little push-back when scope creep, inappropriate comments, or a lack of professionalism occurs. There was an instance where one of these clients made a sexist comment to an account lead and the situation was just brushed off. As an employee, you will be asked to contribute to an exorbitant amount of required extracurricular work. You will be placed into an initiative group (Process, Culture, or B-Corp), and be expected to come to the table with ideas of how the company can promote itself within these areas. You won't be asked which one you'd like to join and they are absolutely mandatory. These initiatives fall outside of your billable workload but are given the same weight and priority. This often means working outside of work hours to make sure they get completed. There are too many non-productive, mandatory meetings. - Every Monday morning, for a half-hour, everyone meets to, whether you're comfortable or not, share details about your weekend. - Every Tuesday morning, for one hour, you either share your progress within your aforementioned initiative group or in-progress client work. - Every Wednesday morning, for a half-hour, the creative team meets to discuss process changes or address their struggles. This speaks to the lack of boundaries and regard for their employees' time. The company pays annually to certify itself as a B-Corporation while doing very little to adhere to the ethical standards expected of one. Whether it is inconsistent follow-through on policy from leadership, a complete and utter lack of diversity when it comes to employees and clientele, or wavering ethics when it comes to who they do work with, there is a lot of misalignment with the company's values and the values of most B-Corps. Their badging as a B-Corp alongside their, at times, tone-deaf "socially-conscious" social media posts ultimately feels like performative activism. As stated above, there is a severe lack of diversity within the team. There were many new hires during my time with the company and only one was a person of color. We were told that there would be efforts around more diverse hiring practices, but it became readily apparent this wasn't a goal when almost every new hire was white. It's very unclear why they wouldn't advertise themselves as such, but this is a Christian organization. There is a reference to scripture within the decor of the office and most, if not all, of their pro-bono or near-free work, is for religiously-affiliated organizations. This isn't inherently negative, but if they are truly trying to attract a more diverse hiring pool, they should reevaluate how they present themselves and work more towards helping disadvantaged groups directly. The annual review process is lazy and an excuse for senior leadership to not be involved in the day-to-day or get to know the people who report to them. A random selection of 3-4 team members is chosen and sent a link to a Google Survey and are asked to evaluate the team member across a variety of criteria. Ultimately, your peers' unfiltered, nonconstructive, personal opinions of you will determine whether you're eligible for promotions. There is an incredible lack of trust at the company and it's very apparent that they would rather mire and bog down their employees, especially the creatives, with overbearing processes instead of giving them room to fail and grow or develop their own creative process.
