Pros
To echo what has been said by many reviewers, the people (outside of leadership) are absolutely amazing. They are some of the most intelligent, caring, and genuinely awesome individuals you will ever meet. They will inspire, encourage, and value you. If I gained anything from the time I spent at Six Spoke, it is lifelong friends. The pace and environment teaches you how to be scrappy and resourceful. There are few boring days. You learn to step up to the plate and become self-taught, self-motivated, and self-reliant. In fact, most of your day-to-day work, experience, and development is left entirely up to you. Of course this is good and bad: if you already have high standards for yourself, your work quality will improve and your work ethic will become tireless. If you can handle the pace, you will stretch yourself and learn new skills almost daily. You will experience and accomplish a lot in a short amount of time and will be proud of yourself, but you will also be burned out and starved for appreciation because you will get none of that from higher-ups. There is a certain comradery, in part because most people are equally overworked and unhappy with the company and/or leadership as you are.
Cons
A major red flag is that the company feels like an early-stage, under-funded startup - even though it is more than 5 years old. The work environment is chaotic and lacks structure, roles and responsibilities are undefined, pay is low, and benefits are underwhelming. Coworkers and HR are sympathetic, but also overworked and powerless due to senior leadership’s (i.e. the CEO’s) tight control and preferences. Leadership is stingy when it comes to giving direction and nurturing your talents, but will generously give criticism if your work product is not perfectly aligned with their expectations. Unless you are on a team that is one of Six Spoke’s core practice areas (i.e. PPC and perhaps Account Management), there is no mentorship or career development. Senior leadership is feedback averse and totally against performance discussions because they are “discouraging” to employees. Um, OK. Six Spoke hires quite a few new grads because they are easy to overwork and the company is priced out of all other brackets. The CEO is a marketer who has perfected the art of the pitch. He will reel you in with inspiring (and empty) jargon like "leadership vacuum," "accelerated career development," "pay for performance," and a vision of "changing the world." He preaches about building an enlightened company full of endless opportunity, but ignores the team’s concerns and ideas for improving the work environment and culture. Thus pay remains low, hours remain long, and there continues to be a mass exodus of top talent in search of companies that will truly value them. Senior leadership is noticeably absent, unavailable, and self-serving. Once you decide to leave and end things on good terms, they will give you the cold shoulder then cut all ties completely. To the people currently at Six Spoke or who are thinking about joining: you deserve better. Leadership has made it clear through its inaction that things will not change and it will not be receptive to the basic needs of its employees.