Great people & culture, but struggled with growth planning - Senior Graphic Designer Refine Labs Employee Review

Great coworkers who are great to work with and really care about doing a good job. Leadership honestly cares about the employees.

As you would expect from an agency, the work is fast-paced and can be high-pressure. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of going in.

Colleagues are incredibly smart, capable professionals. Agency has positive professed values/goals and some benefits, such as unlimited PTO, that align with stated values. Generally quality of clients is strong, through client retention is...inconsistent.

Refine Labs was founded as an incredibly ego-centric agency. There is still an ego-centric culture that is built around self-promotion (and promotion of favored colleagues), rather than a healthy collaborative or even truly merit-based culture. If you're not a self-promoter, you're success and progress in the agency will be very limited. There has also been a lot of instability in mid-management roles, which signals challenges of vision and hiring at this level, which filters down to success of "individual contributors." Salaries may be competitive at time of higher, but fail to keep up with inflation outside of promotion, but organization is relatively flat and offers little room for professional growth, which contributes to employee retention problems.