Marketopia

"Not a place for healthy growth – beware a total lack of work/life balance Pros The single pro here is the people. The agency team is full of talented people who care about what they do and the people they work with. The call center has a lot of kind, devoted people who are 100% dedicated to the well-being of each other and the company. People want to work hard and do the right thing. Cons The bad: Managers are told their teams don’t care and that missing deadlines is a fireable offense, even though teams have no input into deadlines, so timelines are impossible. Leadership touts flexible and collaborative workspaces, but blames teams working from the breakroom for being lazy. Owners push religion on employees, making it impossible to escape invitations to Bible study, in-meeting questions about belief in God, and in-meeting rants about how anyone who doesn’t believe in God is denying the truth and won’t ever be happy. Employees who leave are labeled "cancers" instead of owners accepting feedback. Employees are told in front of peers that a mistake means they "chose not to do their job" and even small mistakes are brought up ad nauseum. Owners believe the agency, which is working above max capacity, is over-staffed. PTO is next to nothing. Owners post on social about the importance of work/life balance, but reprimand employees for taking walks. Valuable employees have been pushed to tears over the viciousness of feedback. The worse: Members of leadership are pitted against each other; performance details shared with peers. Owners berate managers in front of direct reports, and leaders are constantly accused of being untrustworthy and not doing enough even when working through evenings, weekends, and vacations. The owners are rarely on the same page, and the teams are blamed for the resulting confusion. Some teams are held to rigid standards when it comes to deadlines, timelines and work hours. Other teams are allowed to do whatever they want despite lower performance. If a new employee gets sick, they are questioned about whether this is "normal.” Owners continuously ignore reports that the team is overworked; don't allow already strapped teams to hire more, but allow underperforming teams to bloat. 24/7 availability is expected, and even individual contributors are expected to work on vacation; phone calls, texts and emails are sent at all hours, then team members are blamed for “doing too much” if something falls through the cracks. The totally inexcusable: Fat jokes, terrorist comments made to Muslim employees, the female owner of the company discussing the ridiculousness of feminism and the me-too movement. Owners make inappropriate comments about the appearance of interns, innuendos about employees, and racists comments. Regardless of your feelings, they shouldn’t be discussed at work. Owners openly pressure employees to date their friends. Long-term, quality employees are let go on whims, leaving managers to fire them over the phone without warning. Hourly employees are allowed (or encouraged) to work off-the-clock. HR is powerless because they report directly to the CEO, who sees any argument as "disrespect." Owner sends scathing emails about employees to peers; expects non-managers to take on leadership duties in the absence of a manager, but doesn't reward them with title, pay, bonus, or recognition of the extra work. Employees are told in front of teams that they are worthless. Advice to Management There’s nothing that’s going to change here – previous employees have gotten nowhere. My advice would be to start listening and stop spending your time in the trenches. Trust your team instead of constantly expecting the worst from them. Stop beating everyone to pieces. Allow downtime and reward them when they give and give and give. Take several steps back from the day to day and let the actual experts do the work. And stop bringing your personal opinions about race, religion, sexuality, politics, et al to work every day. "