M+R Reviews

That said, even though I cannot relate to a lot of these negative reviews, not every workplace is the right one for every person. Here are some cons: -- The pace is fast, the issues we work on are tough, and that is not for everyone. -- Time management can be difficult, because there's a lot of work. If you don't have good time management skills coming in, you may struggle to stay afloat. -- There are A LOT of meetings, both external and internal. If you are very meeting-averse, this is not the place for you. -- The expectations are high and employees are expected to perform at a high level, pretty early on. That can be stressful, and I'd imagine it's even more stressful if you are just out of college or don't have a ton of work experience. -- There's a steep learning curve if you are new to agency work, particularly as it relates to tracking your hours throughout the work day (so clients can be billed.) Time-tracking in particular may be a hurdle for some folks, so if that sounds like a nightmare to you, perhaps keep looking. (Though the new union contract makes this a bit more flexible.) -- The structure can be a little confusing, and you will have a lot of supervisors. There is only one supervisor who oversees your overall performance and professional development, but you will have supervisors on your account teams as well. So, depending on your role, you might end up with a boss and one or two grand-bosses on each account. I am not bothered by this, and I have never had nine bosses coming to talk to me about my TPS reports, but depending on your disposition and how you feel about supervisory relationships... you might not dig this part of the job. -- This sounds like a contradiction of the thing I just said, but you will also need to be fairly autonomous and able to keep yourself on task without a ton of oversight. If you struggle to get things done if someone isn't watching you, you will struggle, because you're expected to be able to manage your own time and tasks without someone peering over your shoulder to make sure you're working. I like this, but some people might not. -- Because there is a lot of variance in leadership styles and personalities on teams, employees at the same level with the same number of accounts can have totally different experiences at M+R. Every account honestly has its own team culture, and your experience can vary a lot based on who you work with. You can move accounts if it's just not a good fit, but it can take awhile. -- They are still working out some kinks with training people brought in as Account Executives and Account Supervisors. -- You may feel out of place and/or old if you are not a fan of Taylor Swift. (People are REALLY into Taylor Swift.) Overall, though, this is probably not a good job for someone who is new to the workforce or doesn't have a ton of working experience. You will need to hit the ground running, you'll need to come in with some decent skills.

I am a lower-level employee (online associate), so most of my criticism focuses on this type of role and the visible disconnect from the rest of the staff. Employee turnover is extremely high for associates. It’s difficult to ascertain how high it is unless you work here, because most people who quit or get pushed out will leave at the six month mark, and won’t list this job on a resume/LinkedIn. At least ten new people have started and left in the span of time I’ve worked here. I think the extreme turnover is a result of: 1) A huge disconnect between HR and the various teams. The HTML and data manipulation “tests” in the hiring process are much simpler than the type of web development work most online associates are doing. It’s not enough to have “basic HTML/CSS skills”. I cannot recommend taking this job if you have no experience in HTML/CSS specific to emails, various CRMs, Javascript, Java APIs, or the QA side of technical project management, because these are the tasks you’ll actually be doing. 2) Unrealistic performance expectations. M+R will pitch a client project for x amount of hours without taking into account staffing needs (the company is chronically understaffed), and the hours are not sustainable long term for many people. 3) Toxic “top-down” culture. I have no idea if this is normal or not because M+R is the first and last agency I’ll work for, but lower-level employees take all of the blame if something goes wrong, regardless of who made a mistake (to the tune of getting berated on client conference calls). I guess this is useful from a client management perspective, because it makes the VP level folks seem more intelligent? 4) Total disconnect between the management and other employees. The senior level staff devote hours to passion projects within the agency, which is difficult to justify given how understaffed every team is. It seems like management doesn’t have an accurate idea of the associate level workload - projects are completed and passed up the chain for review, then re-done, then re-done again with arbitrary changes (ex. the colors in this document need to be cerulean blue, not aqua blue, so the entire thing needs to be revised). Again, this piece of criticism may be typical of most agencies. 5) Culture fit. The office culture emulates “work hard play hard”, and tries to adopt other aspects of trendy startup culture (but most of the “fun” meetings or events are mandatory). There is an online “M+R dictionary”, with company-specific language and acronyms. The day technically winds down at 6pm, but people are usually in the office working at their standing desks until 8. People are nice in general, but there is a not-insignificant amount of backbiting in the competition for promotions, which is exhausting.