Cool brands, decent pay, but…growth comes at a cost
Pros
You get the opportunity to work on big-name brands, which looks great on a resume. Some of the people there are genuinely talented and supportive. I also received regular raises and did well in my role, which was appreciated.
Cons
If you’re remote, good luck moving up. Advancement tends to favor those in-office and often hinges on vague expectations to “grow and be challenged”—which usually translates to hustling your @ss off until you burn out. Performance reviews felt like a popularity contest, decided by pretentious kool-aid-drinking peers or managers (sometimes younger and less experienced), with little awareness of your true impact. After my final review, I realized that to truly “succeed” in their eyes, I’d have to push myself to a level that wasn’t sustainable without serious mental or physical consequences. So I made the smarter move: took a higher-paying offer where I could thrive simply by being excellent at what I do—without the pressure to conform to arbitrary standards that had little to do with real results.
