Pros
Fully paid healthcare Some neat swag That is literally it.
Cons
I have never in my entire career seen an agency run so poorly. That’s because they’re not an agency. They’re a software company with a sales focus that pretends to be a marketing agency. They don’t know the first thing about actually serving their clients’ marketing needs—nor do they care. Here’s how Scorpion operates: They took a ton of private equity money and massively expanded the sales team. The sales team aggressively pitches the “platform” (their proprietary software) to businesses with lofty promises about boosting leads, but the goal for Scorpion is to lock clients into contracts and collect MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue). Everything at Scorpion is beholden to the almighty MRR. Clients do not own their own websites. They do not own their own content. If they leave Scorpion, it all gets deleted. They are basically hostages. No other agency I’ve ever seen behaves this way. It’s bizarre and, in my opinion, extremely unethical. So that brings us to the actual delivery teams who are expected to fulfill all the orders the salespeople bring in. Every team is short staffed, and management could not possibly care less. Delivering on promises made by the sales team is an afterthought if it’s a thought at all. Writers are expected to write 3,000 words a day every single day. There’s no regard for quality. There aren’t even editors to review content before it goes to the clients. It’s just write-write-write; how dare you not hit your quota; so what if it’s ineffective drivel. It’s not like the client actually owns it anyway. Because of that, everyone is burned out and the quality they put out on their sites is abysmal. For all that work, oftentimes much more than 40 hours a week, pay is well below industry standards. Management will lie about that and say it’s in line with the industry, but if it were I probably wouldn’t be getting 25% more at my new gig. Wondering about raises? Ha ha keep wondering. Sure, they just tossed some bonuses and realignments at some people, but not most people, and even then it was after a round of layoffs. The only thing more common at Scorpion than “restructuring” is reply-all emails every time someone upsells a client¬¬—yes that’s an actual thing that happens literally hundreds of times a week. But they’ll tell you all about their culture and how great it is, and I’m sure it is if you’re a white, cishet, frat bro who loves generic jibber jabber and backstabbing instead of actual innovation and business skills. Their culture is 100% toxic. It is all about who you know, who likes you, who you have a beer with. No one cares about skills or actual marketing industry knowledge; they only care that you drink the Koolaid. But hey, if you like chugging blueberry blast Koolaid and dislike any sort of functional organization, Scorpion might be for you. It sure wasn’t for the new CEO. Oh yeah, they brought in a new CEO last year to try to fix things, and he left within the year. That says a lot. Now the old CEO/founder “Roo” (yes lots of people have nicknames) is back in charge and likes to hold long-winded meetings where he rambles about how much they’re helping their clients but doesn’t actually say anything substantive. Instead he takes credit for the actions of clients as though Scorpion had anything to do with it. Look, it’s all just a mess. The whole company is a mess and has no idea how to be a marketing agency because I don’t think they want to be. My theory: Roo wants to continue building his “platform” and continue infusing it with AI to eventually make the entire delivery team redundant. He wants to sell a software that clients can use on their own to manage their marketing plans without actually having to have writers, designers, or marketing managers. And guess what happens to hundreds of people then. So, if you know anything about marketing, agency standard practices, or just basic human decency—stay away! You will not fit in here. You will be frustrated with the lack of accountability and functionality, and you will spend a good portion of your days looking at job ads. And I want to add, I’m not writing this to get back at them. I’m not trying to hurt them or get even. I’m trying to save some talented people from wasting their time and energy. I wish I could have avoided this place, so hopefully some of you can.
