Razorfish Reviews

Pros

Hands down some of the coolest people in town. Laid back, casual attire. Sick days don't count against vacation or personal days. Lots of learning and knowledge sharing. Good short-term career builder for creative types and web techies and contractors. Free food at least once every other week.

Cons

1. Promotions, raises, and bonuses are a joke...if you even get any of those. 2. Not sure if the Publicis Groupe takeover has been good from a salary and health benefits costs standpoint. 3. People hardly speak to you unless they work directly with you.

Pros

Talented, bright employees, friendly and great work life balance. innovative.

Cons

Few opportunities for women at high levels, Publicis acquisition hit hard senior talent

Advice to Senior Management

Better opportunities for women to achieve in higher management.

Pros

Interesting clients.
Interesting projects.
Intelligent people.
Good creativity.

Cons

Popularity valued over ability
SIlos
Poor organization at times.

Advice to Senior Management

Better leadership

Pros

Real forerunners in the digital space.
Great cohesive work from creative through to media.
Incredible multinational brands to work with.

Cons

Growing business so your usual pains.
High turnover of staff on account management side.
Business direction changes frequently making focus difficult to understand.
New owners making usual administrative work difficult.

Pros

Smart people
Interesting business challenges
Very collaborative

Cons

Lack of vision and direction
No longer a 'sexy' agency, we're now just like everyone else driving towards the bottom line

Pros

Collaborative environment, very smart people, if you are vocal with your needs and have a proven record there are lots of opportunities here

Cons

timing is somewhat important to get put on the project you want to be on
frequent senior management re-org, although that has not impacted day to day operations or the quality of work or clients we bring in

Advice to Senior Management

need to think about how to develop people better and get new talent in the door to push people to the next level or out the door

Pros

Learn alot about the UX practice -- CRUX folks are amongst the best and the brightest in the industry.
Paid very well compared to other companies in the industry.
Flexible work hours.

Cons

The Chicago technology team is comprised of 4, maybe 5 people, and extremely strapped for resources. Senior management responsible for the technology team notoriously condescending and unprofessional.

The organization as a whole has neither the process, nor the capability to execute on technical projects.

There is a high rate of turnover within the technology side of the organization.

Project management is widely acknowledged as a skills gap within the organization, but people refuse to do anything about it. Senior project managers don't know how to use Microsoft Project. There are some great PM's within the organization, but they aren't given any opportunity to rise within their practice.

The technology arm doesn't have the maturity to successfully adopt offshoring as a viable business model.

All of the RF creative folks in one of the offices and half the technology office were laid off and re-hired within the space of a few months, nobody in the rest of the organization knew about it.

Advice to Senior Management

Bringing value to your clients is more than providing them a service based on the bottom line, it's about your process and execution.

Much of the technology turn over in your organization is due to the fact that
a) Employees concerns should not fall on deaf ears.
b) You can't keep talented people and expect them to be silo'd on projects that use legacy technology.

Pros

There are always opportunities for new challenges and career advancement. I took the job because I wanted to be challenged professionally to do my best work. I got exactly what I wanted. I worked harder and was more stressed than ever before.

The people are fantastic, I've never worked with more intelligent, capable people.

Cons

While there are always opportunities for career growth, there are also extreme workplace politics to contend with. Significant turnover in senior management over the last few years has resulted in there no longer being a cohesive strategy that brings employees and customers together in passion over the company's product. That said, there are a few bright spots in management who I'll always have respect for.

There is very little work/life balance. You are rewarded if you bend over backwards and give your all (meaning your personal life is put on the back burner).

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more experienced management to help you rebuild and restrategize the direction you want to take the company in. Some of you are great at what you do but just are not management material and that's okay. Just hire better managers and you'll reap the rewards.

Pros

-Intelligent people with respect to digital marketing

Cons

-Company culture has changed for the worse since AvenueA days
-Terrible management. Largely comprised of yes men, most of whome have little motivation to continue learning with respect to digital, either because they're happy to collect a check or because they're women about to go on maternity leave and have other priorities
-Ridiculous love for meetings (meetings to schedule meetings to schedule meetings).
-Ridiculous love for internal presentations. 99.9% of information that could be communicated in a 2 minute email is instead scheduled for a department meeting that wastes everyone's time but appeases management and allows the presenter to do the ass kissing necessary to get promoted
-Promotions are very political, those deserving are often overlooked while ass-kissing "favorites" are fast tracked, you definitely have to be "on the team".
-Unecessary hard/excessive work seems to be rewarded over smart, efficient work
-Company seems to think they're the CIA, everything is "top secret", whether it's promotion based, company changes, etc.
-Unfair work situations are granted to individuals (telecommuting, job-shares, etc)
-Micromanagement- extreme excess of status meetings and 1-on-1's with your managers in which you share the exact same information multiple times (think TPS reports from Office Space)
-Strange unofficial preference for hiring women over men (seems like a 5 to 1 ratio)
-Very PC from a social perspective, funny since Seattle considers themselves to be so liberal/open
-Upper management needs to get over themselves, small little group that loves to hear themselves speak, curious as to what they actually do
-Merit raises or bonuses are often non-existen or small, be prepared to stay in one place financially if/until you get promoted
-Company often cites the need to save money/be frugile but then wastes it on unecessary expenses (Forced fun, celebrity meeting hosts (plinko), unecessary client trips)
-Overall resistance to change
-Inability to retain top talent, if somebody is thinking about leaving or gets an offer they won't do what it takes to keep someone, only willing to act when it's too late and someone is fed up, seems to assume that the honor of working at Razorfish is enough and is surprised when someobdy leaves

Advice to Senior Management

-Quit micro-managing with all your pointless meetings and "Ra ra we will prevail" speeches.
-Start hiring and retaining the outspoken, innovative thinkers who actually have something to say and a bit of logic rather than promoting the yes men who are willing to kiss your asses
-Quit changing benefits every year for the worse and then trying to convince us that it's somehow better for us
-Start paying more, since our counterparts on the publisher/client side are vocal about their compensation in such a way that we tend to leave for those companies
-Deprocess a bit, get back to free thinking and flexibility
-HIRE SOME DUDES AND SINGLE PEOPLE, holy crap if there was ever a company with more boring, married people who won't party I'd be amazed. AveA days had publisher happy hours/parties galore, now you'd be lucky to get anyone to have a beer, makes things like a Christmas party pointless.

I could go on and on, whatever.

Pros

I enjoy working with smart people who deliver creative, innovative work

Cons

I disagree with how significant changes at all levels are communicated to employees