employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

The Sawtooth Group

Is this your company?

Horrible, toxic environment created by CEO - Anonymous employee The Sawtooth Group Employee Review

1.0
Dec 23, 2020
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Everyone (except the CEO) who works there is really nice and hard-working. Some of the accounts are fun to work on.

Cons

The CEO does not know how to manage people, let alone an agency. The entire work culture can be defined by one word: chaos. She does not know how to trust and allow people to do their jobs, so she micro-manages everything (except those jobs that she doesn’t know how to do). Since she was previously a creative, she uses the creatives as her personal task masters, rather than allowing them to do their job for the client. She pits team members against each other and talks about people behind their backs to other employees like a high school girl. She brings her dogs into work every day, which is highly disruptive to the work (they aren’t trained and are all over the place and one of them gets into everyone’s garbage so everyone has to put their garbage cans on their desk). It’s not like it’s a cool place where employees can bring in their dogs. She just brings in her dogs. The work space is really cool and modern, and the work in theory would be fun to work on, but the CEO will bring the agency down. The saving grace is the other employees who work very hard, are smart, and are very nice. The CEO has retention issues, however, because she doesn’t care about burnout and has an expectation that employees work all hours of the day/night/weekend. Instead of hiring more people to handle the work, she abuses the team she has. Good idea to steer clear of Sawtooth unless you want to add constant chaos and drama to your career path.

Explore other reviews about The Sawtooth Group

5.0
Mar 7, 2022
Anonymous intern
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A great company to work for! Learned a lot and gained great experience!

Cons

None that I can think of

2.0
Jun 25, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The mid-level management and grunt workers are friendly, fun people. The hours aren't terrible by any means, and the pay is very good for the amount of work you put in. I was lucky to meet a few talented people that I will stay connected with throughout my career. The size of the agency was another plus if you enjoy working in small to medium-sized teams. Overall, not a horrible place to start your career, but certainly not a place to make it.

Cons

Boring: There's only one real client and the upper management team WILL NOT step out to explore new ways of advertising for them. I'm not talking about fancy new technology or whacky "out there" ideas -- just fresh thoughts and a new approach. They're perfectly happy to do the job of any in-house team and simply toe the line of same-old, same-old. Cliquey: The creative leads have their favorites and they are not afraid to show it. It can get very uncomfortable when you enter a room and get the feeling that your partner and their pet-creative have been talking about you. If you're not in their clique, they will let you know. Stagnant: One major client is more than enough in their eyes. During my time there, I saw no effort to bring in new clients, expand business, or secure the futur of the firm should that client decide to go into review and leave for another agency.

3
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All