Pros
Managing director is good at schmoozing clients of all shapes and sizes from startups to Fortune 50 enterprises, which is good for two things before it inevitably fails to establish a long-term body of work: - Rapidly diversifies your experience - Potentially gets your foot in the door with a better company
Cons
- Intense and often toxic work environment - Flat and authoritarian leadership structure - Veiled religious affiliation and sometimes inappropriate religious inquiries/discussions from management - Used, and may still use, fake LinkedIn profiles to make the company appear larger to prospective employees and clients. Would not be surprised if many of the positive Glassdoor reviews are fake as well. - Will pull in people on contracts telling them they can go full time if they work hard enough and then completely drains them before letting them go. Many contractors don't even list their experience at this company because they don't want to be associated with it - Managing director will try to sell you on "People work here and then go on to get jobs with big pay increases; not just 3-5% but 15% or more." That's easy to accomplish when the pay is well below industry standard, does not keep up with cost of living, and is arguably discriminatory. Expect to actively lose value the longer you work here. - Combative management will stack you with responsibilities that are normally divided into 3-4 separate full-time roles at other companies. You will then be blamed for any shortcomings and anything that the managing director deems not perfect. Requests for support will be met with, "We're trying to hire more people," only for months to go by and countless applicants turned down because of ridiculous standards. When a new employee is selected, rather than being added to the existing work running everyone else ragged, they will be given new work and you will be left in the same position as before. Or, you will be expected to train them as your replacement before you're thrown to a new set of wolves - Employees were constantly thrown into projects with zero context or training. When asked for training or support, they'd be told most companies don't provide training anymore (FYI: Yes they do!). When they fail, they will be blamed. If the project fails because of the managing director's inaction, you will still be blamed for not holding their hand all the way to conclusion instead of handing off what they're supposed to need and expecting them to do their own job - You will be expected to write vast and detailed documentation for everything but will in a fraction of the time it actually takes to do it. You will be chastised if it takes you too long or doesn't get done because you have actual client work - If someone rage-quits or gets fired, management tends to discuss it negatively with the team: how it wasn't a good fit, they had poor work ethic, or they played video games and smoked pot all day instead of working - Management does not accept criticism or evidence against company policy. Will always find an excuse to double-down on their own beliefs where they are not in the fault - Lean methodology plus "twice as fast; never a mistake" company philosophy leads to rapid employee burnout and turnover. There is a reason the company rarely expands beyond 10 people and has functionally collapsed multiple times. Humans are not machines. - That "twice as fast as other agencies" mentality will be used to justify forcing you to work 80+ hours a week with the deluded belief that you will do it in 40 hours. If you fail to do so, that's your own fault. This is also dishonest to clients who believe they are paying for a dedicated resource when this agency is exceptionally expensive to begin with - Even if you are a decorated industry veteran and a widely accepted subject matter expert, if you format something the way you have every time for 10 years -- you will still get chastised for not doing it exactly the way the managing director envisioned despite little to no direction. You are expected to be functionally psychic.
