False Advertising and Toxic Work Environment - Associate Third Bridge Employee Review

2.0
Apr 19, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Decent pay, some nice colleagues

Cons

1. Knowingly paying their employees under the legal overtime salary minimum; you will be expected to work a minimum of 9 hours a day/45 hours a week and will not be paid overtime for the five hours over 40. They will tell you that you are signing away that right when you sign an employment contract, but that is completely false and against New York labor law. Third Bridge has had to settle out of court multiple times with past employees due to breaking labor laws. And that is not even mentioning that you will be pushed to work over 45 hours every week and will be reprimanded for not, regardless of the fact that they will not pay you for that time. 2. Employment at Third Bridge is a revolving door. People are hired and fired frequently, regardless of work improvement. And a turbulent economy is making work stability substantially worse. They will often choose whether or not to fire you right before the 6 month mark so that they do not have to pay unemployment benefits. The lower management is mostly handled by people with little to no experience in a corporate work environment and individuals are only promoted to management positions due to effectual performance in a totally unrelated role. Competency of management skills are totally irrelevant when being promoted, leading to frustratingly incompetent leadership. 3. They will offer you a fake promotion before any other that increases your workload without increasing your pay. They will call you a "manager" at that time as a justification to break the aforementioned labor law. 4. The work is presented as a research role, but is actually a soul sucking sales role. You will spend every day making quick phone calls, running through project specific screening questions, bargaining with experts over low compensation rates, and doing it all over again. There is no time to actually connect and learn from the people you are calling and will be reprimanded for not getting off the phone fast enough. You will also be judged based on how many experts you onboard and your accrued income rate; support for your colleagues will usually go unrecognized because it does not show in your metrics. 5. You will eventually be asked to help recruit experts in blatantly unethical sectors like the tobacco and weapons industries. When I discovered that I was recruiting individuals who work in nuclear proliferation research for companies like Lockheed Martin, I was done. 6. There is a new volunteer racial/ethnic diversity and representation group that has no sway over company culture. HR frequently says the right things, but is unwilling to create an environment in which non-minority employees are incentivized to participate in events and address workplace discrimination. There is also green-washing and pink-washing strategies to make employees feel like they are doing positive things while working for a company that contributes to substantial damage worldwide. For instance, they brag about planting a handful of trees while working with oil and resource extraction companies, and will share pictures of Pride Events at the China office, while the official Chinese government position is that gay people do no exist there. 7. Perhaps most importantly, Third Bridge preys on young people right out of college who do not know their labor rights and what should be expected from a work environment as an employee. You will find that an overwhelming amount of workers are 21 year old recent graduates or have never had other professional jobs, which allows employees to be manipulated into accepting unfair and unreasonable work practices. ____________________________________________________________________________________ In the end, if you do not care about work-life balance, want to be underpaid, don't mind breaking your ethical code, don't mind lying to and badgering strangers over a variety of contact mediums, and want to due a job that allows for no skill building, this job is for you.

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Third Bridge Response
3y
Thank you for your feedback and we’re sorry to hear you felt this way about your experience with us. There are some points you raise that we feel it’s critical we address. To your final and most important point around hiring practices, we pride ourselves on being fair and open to all demographics. We do offer early career opportunities and support our team with a robust learning and development plan to ensure they’re set up for success, including training, mentorship and more. Our CEO is passionate about the importance of growing our own talent and making sure everyone has the opportunity to thrive with us. We promote people when they are ready, provide them with the tools they need to architect their future and we strive to continually look for ways to create inclusivity and opportunities in all parts of our organisation. A number of our roles are target-based which means it can be a competitive and driven environment too, but our bonus structure and benefits reward this. We do have a high performance culture and, while some roles may need to work outside of standard office hours to support our clients on occasions, we know that our compensation and benefits offering is competitive and employee focused and our employment practices adhere to local requirements. Regarding our commitment to ESG, we have a strong grassroots approach, driven by our ESG Committee that helps us celebrate and drive a more diverse and inclusive culture. We’re proud of how these groups have influenced our business; earlier this year we enhanced our parental leave policies in the US and Europe thanks to feedback from our Women at Third Bridge employee resource group, and we reached Silver EcoVadis status and signed the UN Global Compact. We’re still on a journey, but all employees with a passion for ESG are invited to help us make a difference. We’d welcome a further conversation on the points that you have raised: theteam@thirdbridge.com.

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5.0
Jun 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Engaging, becoming your own industry expert, self paced.

Cons

Strict numbers and repetitive work.

2.0
Apr 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good entry-level opportunity with exposure to fast-paced, client-facing work. The company hires driven, sociable individuals and can be a strong starting point for building communication, prioritization, and execution skills in a high-performance environment.

Cons

High turnover and inconsistent management quality significantly impact the employee experience. Success is heavily dependent on your team lead and manager, with limited recourse if you’re placed under ineffective leadership. In my experience, poor communication, lack of emotional intelligence, and unclear expectations from management made it difficult to succeed and negatively affected day-to-day productivity. Internal processes around performance management and PTO lacked transparency. I was placed on a PIP and terminated shortly after (within a week) in a way that felt abrupt and not aligned with prior communication, which was initially framed as a discussion around pending PTO. There were also delays in PTO approvals, and I experienced issues with compensation adjustments following a promotion that required follow-up to resolve.

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