Pros
I think it’s important and fair to note that I gained a number of valuable skills and competencies at DMA, and that I also was shown many kindnesses and generosities, and for those I will always be grateful. I also do still believe (naive though it may seem at times) that leadership really does want the best for everyone deep down, and that the time and money spent on personal/professional development and insights into self through various personality & aptitude tests are indicative of that. I genuinely respected and cared about my colleagues and the leadership team, I believed (and still believe!) in the company mission, and I think that when times are good, everyone’s heart is in the right place. We also all were 100% on board with the casual attire, team lunches, and an often fun and lively environment. I was really happy at DMA initially, and I quite happily did everything I could to advance the company and the people around me. I also gained several really great friendships while working here. They pay a generous amount on insurance and there is a generous match on the retirement plan.
Cons
I haven’t actually written a Glassdoor review in years. In fact, the main reason I’m writing this one now is that I was given a heads up by an employee that leadership was angry about other reviews that had been posted (and were trying diligently to figure out who they came from), and had made an assumption that one of them was mine. Apparently based in part on my word choice on an Instagram post earlier this year (?). (I’m long gone, so it seems odd that my name even came up.) Sadly though, that sort of thing—the paranoia and secretive witch hunt for a conspiracy that didn’t actually exist—was exactly the kind of shenanigans that marked the end of my time at DMA. Even with the (sometimes quite significant) pros I listed above, that’s not enough to rectify the damage caused by not ensuring people aren’t put in positions to “overserve” clients to the point of legitimate personal detriment, by not listening to employees and handling the situation when that does become the case for an extended period of time, or by engaging in some of the truly unnecessary and unprofessional ad hominem attacks that seem to come near the end, coupled with these suspicions that employees are getting together and speaking badly about the CEO or the company, or just suddenly not being on task, or whatever other fears seem to present out of the blue from our perspective. That happened to more than one person while I was there, and I wish I had connected the dots at the time. I also saw more than one person end up getting the silent treatment once it was suspected that they were unhappy and might eventually leave, and to me that’s just shocking behavior in an office environment. It’s unkind and it’s unnecessary, and it was really disappointing, especially when you really respected someone and didn’t believe them capable of treating others that way. There are some women I worked with who truly deserved better, and their time at DMA ended up causing some legitimate damage to them. When you deny the clear reality of the situation and blame them for things they aren’t actually doing, it ceases to be a simple misunderstanding and quickly becomes a pattern of gaslighting. There were also multiple occasions where we were told that an employee had left and refused to give management a reason why—or were told the reason had nothing to do with their happiness at the company or the workload—and we would later find out that those employees had actually had multiple meetings about workload, previously promised promotions that never seemed to materialize, or pay, among other things. On that note, it has seemed there has been a shift to prioritizing hiring people with family in the industry or other means of (hopefully) providing easy leads and industry connections as opposed to hiring based on actual skills, or even reasonable potential, in some cases. That caused additional stress for already overworked people, and there’s no reason in the world that anyone in the aforementioned category should be making double or nearly double the salary of people who are legitimately working their butt off, and doing so competently.