Pros
- Free food - Creative people - Decent health insurance (if you're salary)
Kontras
If I were to boil this review down to one phrase it would be: I started looking for new jobs my second week here. Like most companies, there are pros and cons to working here. Pro: many creative and talented people on the lower levels of the company (1 star is for them) Con: some of the worst management I’ve ever encountered Pro: catered lunches every day Con: rampant and aggressive egomania is not only accepted but rewarded Pro: happy hour every other Friday Con: barely concealed sexism and completely unconcealed favoritism from upper management Pro: the HR manager and her team are wonderful, caring, and hardworking and they’re doing their best to improve the culture (the second star is for them) Con: it’s difficult for the HR manager to find time to get things done because people are crying in her office almost every day Their slogan is “Inspiring Women Everyday.” One of my coworkers used to suggest more accurate versions of that slogan. The ones I remember were “Crushing Women Everyday.” “Belittling Women Everyday.” “Destroying Women Everyday.” Working here felt a little like being in an abusive relationship. I wanted to love working here, and I really really tried to love working here, but in the end this place exhausted me, infuriated me, demoralized me, and ultimately, it broke me. There are major changes that could be made and some very talented and hardworking people who would be thrilled to help make those changes, but upper management either refuses to acknowledge the problems or refuses to let anyone do anything about them. Then they get angry because nothing is changing. Suggesting changes was met with reactions ranging from indifference to outright hostility. I was talked over, immediately shut down, or completely ignored. Whenever I pushed for changes, the reaction was “why are you getting so upset?” “Why are you getting so worked up?” “Why are you getting so angry?” “Why are you being so aggressive?” Any women reading this will recognize those reactions, and will probably not be surprised to hear that the (male) managers did not view me pushing for changes as decisive or confident, but as overreacting and overly emotional. But when I focused on being flexible and compromising in an attempt to actually get things done, I was overrun and undermined both behind my back and in the open, and then criticized for not getting anything done. Other employees, male and female, told me not only that they recognized those things happening, but that it was happening to other female employees as well. I was going to say I’m pretty sure this is how “all of the female managers” are treated, but there’s only one female manager on the digital team, so saying “all” feels deceptive. Instead I’ll say — I’m pretty sure this is also how the one female manager out of six managers is treated. They hit the other hallmarks of terrible management too: poor communication, complete lack of people skills, unwillingness to hear other opinions, playing favorites, nepotism, etc., all on top of being inconsistent, aggressive, irrational, and completely reactionary. Upper management will say one thing to you in a morning meeting, then something completely different in the afternoon and insist that you were the one who heard wrong or misinterpreted. It’s not uncommon to be shouted at and/or unprofessionally criticized in meetings and in front of your peers. Your ideas that were dismissed outright will be presented back to you as someone else’s brilliant idea. You will be blocked at every turn, then accused of not doing your job. If you try to tell the managers how you feel about how employees are treated, they’ll tell you you’re wrong (about your own feelings and experiences). They’ll make you feel like you’re the crazy one for pointing any of these things out. Many of the managers and team leads have little or no management experience. Some of them do the best they can — they listen and try to understand their employees, they try to find middle ground, they work with HR to improve to their skills. But those managers are drowned out by the ones who just shout louder than everyone else, talk a lot about how they’re the only ones who know what they’re doing, and undermine everyone else at every chance — and these are the ones who are lauded as geniuses and rewarded with salaries double that of some of their peers. This is not an exaggeration. And then they’ll still tell you to your face that the hourly employees making barely above minimum wage can’t be moved to salary. Bottomline: if you’re a man with an inferiority complex that presents as self-righteous egomania, you’ll do very well here. If you’re a mindless yes-man who’s comfortable having no voice and no power to disagree with anyone, you’ll do very well here. If you’re aggressively stubborn and so blindly ambitious that you don’t care who you have to destroy to get to the top, you’ll do very well here. If you’re anything other than that, it’s not worth the toll it will take on your mental, emotional, and physical health.
