Good for getting your foot in the door in the IM industry. Bad for...everything else. - Anonymous The Shelf Employee Review

2.0
Nov 23, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Get your foot in the door with influencer marketing, if that's what you want. WFH even during non-COVID times, if that's what you want. Health insurance benefits aren't awful, but they are a bit more expensive than most. If you're okay with being a work-a-holic who answers Slack messages at 11pm on a Tuesday evening, a job here could work for you.

Cons

Poor leadership and greatly lacking of direction. No work/life balance. Their motto is that if you work from home, you work all the time. Mentally-unstable CEO (one of them) who uses gaslighting, the silent treatment, and other highly vindictive emotional abuse tactics to "get back at" their employees when they feel wronged. Unless you ask them directly what you did to deserve such treatment, you will never know. Horrifying lack of communication, even when it comes to basic functions. No one knows what's going on, who's doing what, or what is due by when. Culture of desperation, where every potential client is a "must-have" regardless of whether or not the client/campaign is a fit. Toxic culture of who's in the "inner circle" vs "outer circle." These terms were used on occasion, so this is not an exaggeration. If you're not in, you'll feel lost, left behind, overworked, and undervalued. If you're in, you'll know some of what's going on, but still overworked and undervalued. A dead-end for anyone who desires to move up within the extremely lateral organization. A tolerance for ignorance of social media and influencer marketing best practices. Instead of being better, they make up their own rules. This is something that isn't tolerated in the industry. They lack a basic understanding of influencer marketing KPIs and related metrics, including various methods of measuring influencer campaign success. They often hire people who are smarter than them, but don't allow them to take the lead when it matters most. Acknowledging these "smarter hires" are more experienced in certain areas and possess more knowledge is next to impossible for them. Micromanaging is the name of the game here. If you don't want to be told how to do your job every single time, you'll be fine. But if you want to be able to make recommendations based on best practices or work autonomously, look elsewhere. And let's just say that there's a reason why very few employees who work here have children and families. Upper management has a hard time tolerating non-work related obligations that pull you away from Slack after 5pm, whether those obligations are work-related, health-related, or anything-related. It should be noted that when the pandemic hit and the company lost a significant number of clients, the owners of the company cut everyone's salaries, most by 20% or 30%, but some by 40%. They positioned it as a temporary setback, and salaries would be restored when business started picking back up again. A few months later, business was "booming" (with clients they were desperate to secure, so they agreed to do massive campaigns for literally peanuts), but salaries never were restored. Nine months later, and no one is getting paid the salary what they were hired at. Shameful.

Explore other reviews about The Shelf

5.0
Mar 18, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Diverse and fun company that cares about their employees

Cons

Ebbs and flows of the nature of agency work!

2.0
Apr 18, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Employees are able to work remotely, but that's pretty much where the pros end. My experience with the company has been disappointing. The salary is mediocre, I haven't seen much growth, and hard work isn't rewarded due to the leadership blatantly playing favorites. It honestly feels like a waste of time working here.

Cons

The Shelf isn't a company I would recommend working for to anyone, especially if you're trying to advance your career. The onboarding experience here is pretty disappointing; employees aren't given any training at all, but are expected to accomplish complex tasks and meet high expectations without any support as soon as they start working. Workloads are pretty heavy, and combined with how tight the deadlines can be employees' work-life balances are usually pretty awful. Opportunities to grow are scarce, and that's due to how biased the leadership is. Unless you have connections, you aren't going to see much success here.

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