What are co-workers like at Animalz?

Pros

Animalz is a perplexing animal, no pun intended. On the one hand, there are great people there who do everything in their power to make life better for their team. On the other hand, their power is limited and those with the ability to effect change have no interest in doing so. For those brand new to content marketing, or those looking to rapidly grow their portfolio, Animalz has something to offer. You will work with a wide variety of clients, likely many since churn is high. This breadth of experience is great for your portfolio, especially if you have the opportunity to work with more established clients where your work is likely to garner a nice amount of traffic or other measurable results. And for those lucky enough to work with the big flashy brands, that's something fun to stick in a cover letter. Animalz also provides the opportunity to grow your skillset, largely because you'll work with talented content managers (CMs) that are often willing to teach you a thing or two, time permitting. Animalz also changed their payscale some months ago, which for some resulted in a pay increase that put them above what many other agencies would pay. (Worth noting: the pay increase wasn't applied to everyone in a uniform manner, with many benefitting more than others.)

Cons

Unfortunately Animalz has a major churn problem, both with employees and clients. Animalz went through a period of aggressive customer growth during much of 2021, the pursuit of sales overtaking the pursuit of any meaningful change in company culture. This growth, while profitable for a select few, resulted in more work than CMs could handle, overworked editors and copyeditors, and a heavy reliance on freelance writers. Clients pay a LOT of money to work with Animalz, drawn in by promises of traffic growth, brand awareness, and above all: work done by the once-renowned Animalz staff. With customer growth outpacing all else in 2021, it became commonplace for customers to have freelance writers doing their work, unbeknownst to the client. Simply put: this is a blatant lie our customers are being sold. Imagine running a five-star burger joint and serving your customers rewrapped Big Macs. When CMs questioned upper management about the use of freelancers, the answer was often something to the tune of, "It's a temporary fix and something we don't foresee happening for long." Last time I checked, freelancer use is still commonplace for all new accounts, some having freelancers on them for months before getting a permanent CM. Training is another rough spot at Animalz. Onboarding improved over my time there, but still left a lot to be desired. Team leads are often so overworked they can't devote proper time to CMs, meaning those CMs are left trying to learn from other CMs, who are equally if not more swamped than the person trying to learn. It's a vicious cycle that leaves everyone exhausted, everyone overworked, and everyone learning on the fly (or making things up on the go). Paired with the lofty promises made to clients on sales calls, and you've got a bunch of new hires set up to fail. Speaking of training, it's worth pointing out Animalz started to pivot last year during their rapid growth and loss phase. Rather than view themselves as a content agency, they started to tell employees they were becoming a learning institution. The idea being, it's expected people join the company to learn, and then "graduate" to a better job. (The latter part is at least true for most.) There are talented people at Animalz with the capacity to educate, but those foundations weren't even in place when this messaging was used in the wake of the great employee exodus. Much like telling your passengers the sinking ship is now a swimming pool, the statement that Animalz was becoming a learning institution simply wasn't true. Maybe one day Animalz will be a learning institution, but 99% of the people at Animalz came to work at a content agency, not a content agency with so little faith in their ability to retain employees they rebrand themselves. There's also a massive issue with benefits that borders on discrimination. For those without dependents, Animalz insurance is serviceable. For those with dependents, Animalz pays none of the coverage. This means people with two or three or four dependents will easily pay upwards of $12,000 per year for insurance. If you're reading this and you have an offer from Animalz, be sure to subtract these insurance costs from anything they offer you—dependent coverage is unlikely to arrive anytime soon, if ever. (The same goes for 401k matching, which was often teased but never delivered.)

Advice to Management

Animalz had, and maybe still has, the potential to be a great agency. But, the pace at which the company is attempting to grow is rivaled only by the pace at which they're burning what goodwill they have left in the industry. If Animalz has any chance of course correcting, leadership needs to see the forest for the trees. Be brave and own up to the fact that you've prioritized profit over people, margins over mental health, and lost an exorbitant number of talented people because of burn out. Then, stop talking and start listening to your people—they have a lot to teach you.

Pros

A few days into my career at Animalz, I knew it was a great fit. However, because of past toxic job experiences, I was wary that I was in a "honeymoon" phase that would eventually wear off. Over a year later, it still hasn't worn off! No company is perfect, but what makes Animalz stand out is that leadership genuinely cares about their people and is working to make things better. Sometimes that progress is slow, sometimes it creates growing pains, etc. But I've been in places where no progress is made at all...so dealing with growing pains feels far better. It's a sign that they're continually trying to make things better and are always willing to admit when they're wrong and need to change direction. Agency life in general can be hard. It requires a focus on production, which can be stressful. But over the years they've reduced the number of articles to a manageable amount after listening to their employees. They're also working on ways to reduce the emphasis on production numbers. That's not an easy task in an agency environment, but they're willing to take it on for our sake. As far as workload, the expectation is 8 articles a month (on the months you don't take PTO). If you come from agency life, you know how manageable this is compared to most agencies that require you to write an article a day sometimes. The feedback process is hefty, so in general, the articles do take longer from start to finish, but it's so nice to be able to focus on quality over quantity.

Cons

If you haven't been in a position where you're writing full-time (or if you have no agency experience), there might be a steep learning curve to ramp up to the production required. So if you're genuinely not interested in writing full time, this probably isn't the position for you. The company is also facing growing pains right now (largely due to restructuring how teams work). This is natural with any company, but if you're easily stressed out by change then maybe consider applying 6 months from now when things have stabilized.

Advice to Management

If you think something (especially a structural change) is a good idea, crowdsource it first! A few of the recent changes have caused the difficulties they have because leadership didn't ask CMs or Team Leads what they thought. Also, take into consideration things like customer delays, backlogs, etc. when looking at capacity and production numbers. Sometimes production difficulties are on individual CMs, but sometimes there are so many customer issues that we can't plan for or work around (even if we're taking on other pieces while waiting for a customer to give feedback, etc.)

Pros

Not counting the extremely incompetent leadership, Animalz has some of the most talented people in content marketing. It's a privilege to work with them every single day. This agency is therefore great if you're relatively new in your content marketing career, and would like to strengthen your skills and hold yourself to a higher standard. To some extent, this agency is still regarded as one of the best content marketing agencies on the planet. While that reputation is now dying as a result of poor leadership, having the Animalz logo on your resume may help open some doors in your content marketing career. The job is also completely remote, which is a huge plus if you're not so big on commuting.

Cons

As many other reviews have pointed out, Animalz is currently in a death spiral. Morale is extremely low. Burnout is the norm. Employees have been leaving in droves. And customer churn is at an all-time high. The root cause for all of the above? An incompetent and inexperienced leadership team that looks like a bunch of children pretend-playing at running a company. Except, actual children tend to show signs of empathy for those around them, which the current leadership severely lacks. For starters, there is a huge disconnect between what’s promised to the clients (quality) and the internal expectations (quantity). Animalz has always positioned itself as a premium content marketing agency, offering attention to detail, great customer service, and top-notch content; all the qualities of a true “white glove” service. However, certain people in the leadership — who, mind you, couldn’t write a single blog post to save their lives — believe that producing content of that level is like snapping your fingers. If you fail to deliver a certain number of articles every 3 months (which you most likely would) you’ll get placed on a performance improvement plan by a certain, miserable person in the leadership. And if the stress of your job being constantly at risk isn’t enough, you get lumped together with a “Customer Success Manager,” whose JD is to essentially crack the whip on you to “GET THINGS DONE” because they can’t be bothered to manage expectations with the clients. Ultimately, you’ll end up getting burnt-out which you’ll never really recover from. These issues have been brought up with the leadership team MANY times. Employees have been voicing their concerns and letting them know that something about the process needs to change. Unfortunately, the leadership team simply refuses to listen to anything that those on the ground — the actual people earning revenue for the company — have to say. After completely ignoring the cries of the poor CMs, team leads, and editors below, what does the leadership do to “fix” the burnout problem? Planning a total organizational restructure that adds even more responsibilities to the people who are already overworked! That itself opened up an entirely new can of worms, as some seriously talented people were denied new “senior-level” positions for reasons that are extremely foolish. Now, those people are actively planning their exits from the company. I’m not going to go much deeper into this mess because it’s a dumpster fire of such a large magnitude that it’ll make this review super long. The point of sharing this was to show you the severe incompetence of the Animalz leadership. There are also little to no growth opportunities. Sure, you’ll learn how to write an incredible blog post, and pick up on some SEO and reporting skills. But that’s where the growth ends. The only way up is being a total suck-up. If you’re cool with that, there’s no stopping you from breaking the glass ceiling. But if you’re not, you’ll be forced to take initiative, and prove your worth and skills “on your own time.” And even then, if someone on the leadership team has a personal problem with you, you’ll end up staying where you are for the rest of your duration at Animalz.

Advice to Management

What's the point of giving advice when they won't even listen? I don't trust them to do what's right. However, if I could say one thing to the entire leadership team, it would be this: quit while you're ahead. Leave the company, and let the actual content professionals take charge and make this the greatest content marketing agency that it ever was. Find another line of work, because clearly, this isn't working out for you.

Pros

Excellent team full of very smart and experienced content marketers. Very supportive colleagues and management.

Cons

Typical agency stuff. Working with clients can be very hectic and stressful, especially when deadlines and quotas are thrown into the mix.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing. The team is on the right path.

Pros

If you’re capable, driven, and have strong psychological stamina, you really can pretty much own end-to-end content production for some decent clients, maybe even a unicorn if you’re very lucky. “Ownership” is prized highly at Animalz, so if you’re happy taking the lead on a project from start to finish with minimal support––and I do mean minimal support––you’ll soon be able to translate that experience into a better gig at a much better company. For at least a little while longer, you can probably leverage Animalz’s formerly strong reputation into better career opportunities after you leave, though that window is closing rapidly. Same goes for your coworkers––I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the smartest, most talented people I’ve ever worked with in my career, though virtually all of them have left or been forced out by now.

Cons

Take a look at the other reviews on this page. See the ones that were obviously written under duress by junior hires, or maybe members of senior management themselves? The ones that all just happened to be published on August 11 because leadership panicked and didn’t even think to publish them over the course of a few weeks to make them seem more credible? The reviews even a child could spot as obvious fakes? That’s how stupid Animalz’s leadership thinks you are. They’re convinced you’re either too dumb or too desperate to see through their obvious lies, and make no mistake, they will lie to you––and keep lying to you––from your first day until the day you finally tire of it and quit. Animalz really could have been the very best content marketing agency in the world. They had a truly world-class team and a reputation to match. But instead of investing in that talent and building on that brand equity, they squandered it all in the name of wildly unsustainable growth for no other reason than to satisfy the founder’s greed. Everything that made this agency great has been sacrificed in the name of myopic, short-term growth, and even that has been jeopardized by senior leadership’s inability to admit they’re completely out of their depth. As other reviews have noted, churn is the only game in town at Animalz. It’s a constant race to the bottom between employee churn and client churn. Since April 2021, Animalz has steadily lost the majority of its most experienced, tenured people because the concept of retention is utterly alien to management. Burnout is endemic, and the company simply couldn’t care less. The CEO will try to tell you that the chronic staff turnover is the result of the pandemic, or “The Great Resignation,” or because “people just don’t want to work anymore,” but that’s because she’s a malignant narcissist with nothing but contempt for the people who work for her and thinks you’ll believe lazy, reductive nonsense. All but two of the companies listed in the “Work with cool buds” section of the website churned long, long ago. These days, Animalz will work with almost literally anybody willing to pay them, and is desperately leveraging what little brand equity they have left to secure new business and keep the lights on. Due to the constant state of utter chaos, clients are routinely “onboarded” without a dedicated writer. We’re not talking about tiny pre-seed startups here––we’re talking industry-leading enterprise firms with market caps of billions of dollars whose work is literally farmed out to mediocre freelancers from day one. The agency’s reliance on freelancers has become so dire that some clients have churned before a full-time content manager has even been assigned to their account because it became embarrassingly obvious that their work was being outsourced. Because they don’t understand or value editorial expertise, leadership really does believe that simplistic checklists and questionnaires––the “process” that leadership loves to talk about on podcasts––can replace genuine subject-matter expertise and editorial experience. They’ve created a revolving door of failure in which both clients and employees burn out hard, then churn. It’s completely unsustainable, and Animalz’s formerly strong reputation has sunk lower and lower as editorial standards have fallen. To say Animalz pays poorly would be a considerable understatement. For years, Animalz’s internal “development guidelines”––benchmarks that determined employees’ level and compensation––did not account for previous experience at all. Think about that for a second. You could literally be a journalist with 20 years of experience at a national publication (and we’ve had more than a couple), and you could easily be determined to be a Level 1 content manager earning $50k because you lack SEO experience. Yes, really. The company recently revised its levels system because manageent finally accepted they couldn’t attract quality candidates by asking them to literally do the jobs of three people AND pay 30-40% under market rate. Now, incoming new hires can and do earn more than multi-year veterans with significantly more experience thanks to a half-baked, discriminatory “banding” system. This was presented as an “investment in the company,” but it’s nothing more than a transparent attempt to pay new hires more money because they’re desperate to attract new people to replace the exodus of experienced people who have quit. A handful of existing staffers got modest raises when this banding system was introduced, but only the “team players”––several of our most tenured, experienced people were deliberately excluded from these raises out of spite. When pressed during a meeting, the Head of People Ops also refused to rule out the possibility of salaries being reduced under the new salary bands. The “benefits” at Animalz are pitiful. When one former colleague joined the company in 2019, the insurance offered by Animalz did not even qualify as legally acceptable healthcare coverage in that person’s state. The founder’s brilliant solution? Asking other male founders on Twitter what he should do about it, which was ultimately nothing for another year. Another colleague was paying more than $15,000 per year on insurance coverage for their family, but was told the company couldn’t offer coverage for dependents because it would cost the company a paltry $60k per year to do so. Another was unable to seek care for a medical condition that was interfering with their work at all because no reputable specialists in their state accepted Animalz’s dismal coverage. During the interview process, they might try to tempt you with “unlimited personal days” and “unlimited sick days.” In practice, as other reviewers have noted, these policies may as well not exist. Staff are responsible for sourcing their own writing coverage during periods of PTO––not their managers, for reasons which have never been explained––which typically means working a 60-hour week on either side of a five-day break because everybody is so chronically overworked that coverage simply isn’t an option. You might get lucky with freelancer coverage, but most of them will be too busy onboarding new clients. The company itself is held together with gum and duct tape. Data security and governance is a nightmare––100+ employees share a handful of unsecured Google account passwords to access critical tools and systems––and the entire company is built on a rat’s nest of random documents, misplaced spreadsheets, and broken webforms. Airtable integrations fail daily, nobody knows who should be responsible for anything, and all of this overhead is placed on a handful of already overburdened People Ops folks who keep this ship of fools running virtually single-handedly. If toxic positivity is a trigger for you, I strongly advise you to seek employment elsewhere. You’ll be gaslit over and over again by people who love to talk about “ownership” and “personal responsibility” but refuse to be held to account for the disastrous impacts of their terrible decisions. Any and all criticism––no matter how valid––is silenced. There is quite literally no forum in which any negative feedback is acceptable. Genuine criticism is dismissed as “venting” and used against people as evidence of them being “problematic.” Team leads have routinely been instructed to suppress negative feedback among their teams (including actively dissuading people from discussing unionization), and if you have a problem with anyone in a position of power, you’re literally on your own. Leadership is keenly aware of this significant power differential and frequently leverages it to avoid being held accountable. Animalz has become an increasingly authoritarian workplace over the past 18 months. Any vestiges of transparency (including salaries, which were once openly visible to everybody) is being dismantled; the CEO described salary transparency as “more trouble than it’s worth.” Decision-making processes are opaque at best, and you’ll receive simplistic, dismissive answers if you dare ask how certain decisions were made. You may be tempted to dismiss the above as nothing more than the bitterness of a former employee. Admittedly, it’s very difficult to reconcile Animalz’s former reputation in the industry with the reality of the day-to-day at the agency today, but everything above is true. Leadership’s only priority now is “controlling the narrative,” and they will do and say anything to manage the optics surrounding their failures and the deteriorating conditions at the agency as a whole. Whoever you are––whether you’re an experienced industry vet or a fresh graduate hoping to cut your teeth in an agency environment––you can do so much better. Some of us gave management the benefit of the doubt over and over again, only for our hard work and goodwill to be thrown in our faces. Please don’t make the same mistakes we did. Find a company that will truly value your skills, experience, and wellbeing, because Animalz simply won’t.

Advice to Management

Resign and pursue career opportunities that do not involve making decisions that affect other people’s lives, because it’s readily apparent you lack the maturity, emotional intelligence, and business acumen to do so. Your employees aren’t supporting characters in the novel of your life––they’re living, breathing human beings that deserve to be treated with the kind of dignity and respect of which you’re clearly incapable. Being a leader is about more than taking credit for much smarter people’s hard work on podcasts. Cut the “eat, pray, love” nonsense from company standups. It’s insulting, and the people who should be able to trust you deserve better than trite platitudes. When you hire former journalists, reporters, and industry analysts, don’t be surprised when they can see right through your pathetic attempts to dismiss valid concerns with fake smiles. You’re fooling nobody, least of all your clients. People can plainly see how much trouble the company is in, and people are talking.

Pros

Work from home, average benefits, meet lots of great people

Cons

I was willing to leave my experiences with Animalz behind when I left the company. But I recently came across a job post for Flow Club that prominently featured Haley, Animalz COO. The job post said, “Also in 2021, the team met Haley Bryant as one of Flow Club's early members and biggest advocates. Haley joined as an angel investor and a part-time operations lead.” In the spring and summer of 2021, Animalz was having difficulty retaining employees and customers. Overly ambitious sales goals were made, experienced writers left, and Animalz hired a bunch of new, less-experienced writers. This caused customers to churn, because the quality of work was not where it should have been. At the same time, Haley was soliciting Animalz employees to learn about, sign up, and use Flow Club. As COO, an endorsement carries additional weight. Those who use it will get more time with a powerful person within Animalz. It feels awful knowing she was working to financially benefit from Flow Club while promoting the service to Animalz employees. I believe getting employees to sign up for a service in which she has financial interests (salary, gains from her investment) puts her in violation of the non-solicitation clause at Animalz. Second, Haley’s decision to be an angel investor with the Hustle Fund may be a conflict of interest. Animalz policy expressly prohibits providing work for a direct competitor, supplier, distributor, or contractor for Animalz. I would think, given the team was encouraged to use Flow Club, that they count as a supplier. And given Flow Club calls her an employee and investor, I would think that counts as “providing work.” Upper management may have known about Haley’s relationship with Flow Club, but Animalz employees did not. And that calls into question whether or not Haley has financial interests in other tools or services she promotes. Animalz has a lot of problems, and it’s surprising that the #2 leader seems to be part-timing the job (while she part-times a few other jobs.)

Advice to Management

Would it be okay for any other employee to get people to sign up for a company they work for and invest in? No. Lead this company. Lots of people and customers are counting on you.

Pros

As other people have written, the saving grace of Animalz is getting to work with writers and editors (and some team leads) who care deeply about doing good work and supporting each other. The high degree of editorial oversight means that even if you learn nothing else, you will walk away from the company as a better writer. Unfortunately, making genuine connections with the people you work with is extremely difficult, because everyone is overwhelmed and afraid to speak openly about any issues because of an entrenched culture of toxic positivity. It is still possible to have a good experience at Animalz if: -You have a natural ability to produce huge amounts of content every week, while managing customers, coming up with content ideas, reporting on performance, and other duties -You happen to be paired with a team lead who takes an interest in you and isn’t so completely overwhelmed that they can’t help you at all -You happen to be assigned to customers with an approach to content that makes sense, and who have reasonable expectations of you. (Because if they don’t, you should not expect support from the company in pushing back on them.) -You are capable of focusing only on your own work, and ignoring the people burning out and quitting all around you, the nonsensical proclamations from management, and the company’s increasingly dire financial straits

Cons

Animalz is in a death spiral. And even if you don’t care about the fate of the company as a whole, and you check every box in the “pros” section, you will inevitably be harmed by the experience of working at a company this grotesquely mismanaged. The company's issues with burnout, churn, and work quality have already been covered by my former colleagues eloquently and at length. So I want to focus on talking about the two things that really messed me up at Animalz: toxic positivity and gaslighting. I’m aware both of those terms have been overused and robbed of their original meanings, but we can restore them to usefulness if we simply use Animalz as the universal benchmark to which all other examples can be compared. Because seriously: the place is the dictionary definition of each. I personally mark the beginning of Animalz' descent into toxicity as the day when a member of leadership imposed the “no venting “rule. This created a company culture in which it is forbidden to acknowledge problems, or publicly admit to unhappiness or stress. The enforced and false positivity has made the experience of working at Animalz deeply isolating for people, who assume that any issues with burnout and overwhelming workloads are their personal problems and not evidence of systemic failures. On top of that, Animalz explicitly rewards people for taking on duties that are *not their jobs* without compensating them for it. Your reward will come in the form of public praise for being such a "rock star," and your peers will echo this praise out of a sense of obligation, thus endlessly perpetuating the culture dominated by fake smiles and the constant repetition that "everything is fine." Which brings us to the gaslighting. As I said before, things are not going well at Animalz. But rather than acknowledge or meaningfully address that, leadership constantly tries to paper over it, and convince you that what looks like chaos is actually growth. When four members of senior leadership departed the company in three months, the CEO addressed this in an all-hands by saying that retention isn't a priority. In the face of mounting customer churn, leadership will simply change metrics to ones that it finds more favorable, rather than address the bad numbers. Every few months, leadership announces some grand new initiative or direction for the company, but these ideas are never fully thought out before they are presented, and no one can answer any questions about *how they will work*. The company is now undergoing its second major re-organization in under a year, but there's no sense of why or what it will mean on a day-to-day basis. Concerns about slipping standards and unhappy customers have led to an announcement that we now prioritize "outcomes over articles." (This would doubtlessly come as a shock to our customers, since articles are the thing they pay us for.) Oh and we're adding new products! Including video! How, you ask? No one can tell you. But the experience of having to pretend that any of the above makes sense is exhausting and demoralizing. Prolonged exposure to that kind of dishonesty is bad for your health, and I mean that very literally, since issues with sleep, substances, and anxiety are quietly rampant among the team.

Advice to Management

This advice is not directed to senior leadership, because I don't believe they are capable of accepting advice that requires real change. My feedback is directed at the leaders in the middle, who are trying to keep their own careers intact, but in doing so, are enabling a toxic culture that is doing real damage to people's lives. To you I say: you have more power than you think. You do not have to nod along with every ridiculous proclamation from leadership, or carry out their paranoid campaigns against anything with the slightest whiff of organizing. You can band together and stand up, or you can leave. If this company is going to be saved, it will only be by people like you, blowing on the dying embers of what originally made it a success: undeniably brilliant work from people who truly believed in what we were doing. Any attempts to circumvent that through new products or cost cutting will inevitably fail. It’s already failing. And the result is not just the wreckage of a company, but the wreckage of people's careers, mental health, and perceptions of you.

Pros

-- Challenging work that forces you to learn and grow -- If you're ambitious and willing and open to develop your skills, then there's a lot of opportunity for internal advancement. Management seems genuinely interested in evolving the company, improving processes and promoting people who are excited about and committed to doing the same. As other reviewers have noted, there is a good amount of employee turnover, but from my perspective, a lot of that comes down to lack of fit (particularly in the case of some people staying less than a year) -- People who have moved on from Animalz have gone on to in-house jobs at great companies -- Great, supportive coworkers -- Flexible schedules -- Decent benefits

Cons

-- Content marketing is essentially a service industry, and sometimes clients can be difficult and demanding -- The team is geographically distributed, so you need to be able to handle working with people across several time zones

Advice to Management

Keep hiring smart, talented people who are a good fit for a growing company

Pros

Animalz has a knack for hiring amazing people. The editors, writers, and most of the team leads are talented and empathetic, really focusing on teamwork. The editors especially will force you to improve your writing through their high standards, discerning eyes, and constructive feedback. I became a much better content marketer under my team lead's direction and my editor's guidance. Truly flexible hours because the workforce is globally distributed. Outside of meetings with your team and your clients, you can do your work whenever you want. If you're lucky, you get to write for big-name clients in tech, and usually will be able to gain additional experience writing across verticals. While most clients sign on for blog posts or articles, some clients request different kinds of content that you can use to fill your portfolio, like social media copy for Twitter or LinkedIn, copywriting for landing pages, whitepapers, and eBooks. The Animalz brand is relatively well-known in the content marketing world, built mostly on its past reputation more than its current state. Having Animalz on your resume alone can open a lot of doors for freelancing and job hunting.

Cons

Animalz has been rapidly spiraling toward its doom for a while now. Customer churn due to both the state of the tech industry and Animalz's high price point is ridiculously high. And employee attrition is right there too. Morale sank to rock bottom after three highly-respected editors were unceremoniously and suddenly laid off in November. Scheduled cost of living adjustments and promotion cycles were put on indefinite freeze until leadership could bring Animalz out of its financial nose dive. There are no professional development or growth opportunities like an upskill fund, structured content marketing courses (which you'd think Animalz could develop with the combined talent that lives there) -- or even time for CMs to upskill with their rigorous workloads. Given all these factors, why would anyone choose to stick with the company when the company hasn't shown any commitment to us, the employees? Leadership states that they've been focused on bettering the financials of the company first by focusing on production and developing its new AI content service, and employee retention and development have had to sit on the back burner in the meantime. In fact, the attrition has been called out as a positive because leadership didn't have to lay off any CMs to match our decreasing customer base. While I acknowledge that some of my coworkers have had nothing but positive experiences working at Animalz, that hasn't been true for myself and many current and ex-colleagues. There's a reason why the average tenure of an Animalz employee is just over a year, according to LinkedIn. It's because most sane content marketers that focus on quality of work over quantity work aren't set up to succeed at Animalz. There are so many systemic issues at Animalz, but the main problem that bleeds into all the others: The leaders at the helm of the company making the big business decisions have no idea what they're doing, and don't lead with empathy for the people actually doing the work that Animalz sells - CMs, editors, TLs and CSMs. When I started at Animalz, the agency was in the midst of a furious hiring spree to catch up with the unsustainable workloads they had signed due to onboarding new clients. My client already had a backlog before my first day because they had been waiting for me to start. Backlogs and being behind on client work is a common theme at Animalz and leadership treats it like a failure on the part of CMs, TLs and CSMs when it's a process issue. Production goals are extremely difficult for most CMs to meet. You're expected to write 8 high-quality articles or an equivalent length per month (~2 per week). This doesn't sound like much at first, but the work pace is grueling, especially with the number of times your drafts need to be reviewed if you're under L4. This makes it extremely easy to fall behind on delivery dates and your KPIs -- and then stay behind forever. And that's exactly what happened to me. I started trying to work overtime to catch up but I could never reach that unattainable 8-article goal due to my clients not giving approvals in time and the extra responsibilities we're expected to do -- client revisions for each piece, monthly reporting and client meetings, doing ideation and creating content briefs. Not to mention my own personal issues outside of work, outside of my control. Inevitably, I started burning out just 6 months into my Animalz experience. If I had to point to a single defining moment as the point of no return for Animalz, it would be when a specific person was hired to whip CMs and TLs into shape so that the company would increase production. The processes she's put in place penalize CMs for not delivering a full 8 credits every month, but doesn't allow room or understanding for the delays and issues that cause us to not be able to do so. Under her watchful eye, anyone with low monthly production averages gets flagged as underperformers. They get put on performance improvement plans, regardless of whether or not their Team Lead agrees with the decision, to try to manage them out or squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of them forcefully. Some of our international employees with lower KPIs have been placed without notice on a pay-per-credit model -- or even let go with no notice. Most importantly, we were told if you can't maintain a 3-month rolling monthly average of 6.5 articles, you can't take time off. When you put an already-worn axe to the grinder, something's got to give. For me, that was my mental and physical health. I wanted so badly to take some PTO time off to recover, but the company moved from 20 days PTO to "unlimited" PTO - with the caveat that you had to be meeting your 3-month production average of 6.5 credits. In a perfect world, where everything goes right -- yes, 6.5 credits wouldn't be unreasonable to expect. But for those of us working on the ground level, we know it's not possible for many of us - especially those with any form of neurodivergence. I was unable to take time off... and so I continued to burn out until there was nothing left of me to give until finally, I flunked out of Animalz. Despite the quality of my work constantly being praised by editors, clients, my TL and CSM, I was an underperformer based solely on quantity - which is the main metric by which leadership evaluates your work. There is no empathy for the hard, meaningful work that we do. We're treated like robots, supposed to churn out content day after day. Leadership lacks the fundamental understanding of what goes into creating content for our clients; they really believe that you should be spending two days per article, even accounting for editorial review cycles and queues, and use one day for the other work tasks heaped on us. Despite the flexible schedules, there is no work-life balance. The delivery date is supreme; I know several other CMs and I have pulled allnighters and worked weekends to get articles submitted to the editing queues on time... and pray that the editors, who are now very overworked doing 1.5x their previous workloads, can get feedback to you in time to deliver. It's common nowadays for me to see my editor log in early and work late to make sure we all get our pieces back by end of day, which is really disheartening. As a former colleague noted in their review, Animalz causes many of us to develop or worsen problems with substances, sleep, and anxiety due to the stress of the job. Because of the editorial team layoffs, there's now a huge problem with quality. Our clients pay to get really good content that's been reviewed up to three times -- usually by an editor twice and a copyeditor once. For L4+ CMs, that was one editor review and one copyeditor review. Now, the copyediting stage has been replaced for L4+ CMs... with Grammarly. A poor substitute for the careful review of our gifted copyeditor team. When concerns have been raised about this, leadership said the quality you get from Grammarly is about on par with a copyeditor's review and that if you're really that concerned, you can raise the issue with our Lead Editor and fight to get approved to put your pieces in the copyediting queue. Perhaps I wasn't the right fit for Animalz. I'm sure that this review will be ignored or publicly refuted, as was once done by our CEO in an email to all employees, as the remarks of a disgruntled ex-employee. But after talking to many current and ex-Animalz, I've come to think that most people aren't right for Animalz. Or rather, Animalz isn't the right company for most people, because the people in charge don't know how to manage it.

Advice to Management

Listen to what employees are saying and have been saying for ages instead of gaslighting them. Burnout is a serious issue. Production KPIs and minimum averages are an issue. Internal messaging is an issue. The inability to take time off either because of production KPIs or because of the massive workload awaiting you upon your return is an issue. Overly demanding clients who give mountains of feedback are an issue. Low compensation and lack of 401k matching are issues. Foster psychological safety for employees by eliminating the "no venting" policy and encouraging employees to express frustrations and problems without being put down or gaslit. When we raise issues currently, we're told that we're the only ones experiencing that issue, which makes us feel alone and unheard... until we talk to each other and realize -- no, everyone has this issue. Everyone is burnt out. Everyone is tired of being held to unrealistic production expectations. Everyone is looking for new jobs because Animalz doesn't care to retain us. Lead with empathy for team members over customers. Adjust workload expectations for CMs because not all CMs have the same kind of workload or smooth clients. Even if promotions or bonuses aren't financially possible, give recognition more boldly and loudly about the contributions that hard-working team members do make. Consider slimming down the C-suite or taking exec pay cuts before conducting any more layoffs. Acknowledge the impact that layoffs have on employee morale instead of sweeping everything under the rug as a necessary business decision. Real people and their livelihoods were affected and you have to put in the hard work to earn employee trust back instead of just telling us to deal with the reality of the company's financials. Carve out time for CMs to actually pursue professional development opportunities and upskill. Part of the reason we have such huge backlogs is that we're supposed to do ideation for our customers, but if you don't know how to do it, you have no time to learn how to do so with your ceaseless production expectations. We also have no time (or money) to take courses on skills we don't have resources on, like crafting email marketing campaigns or writing LinkedIn thought leadership. Enable employees to actually take time off instead of micromanaging and examining every PTO request against our KPIs. Institute mandatory minimum PTO. Adjust expectations with clients if there's no coverage available for CMs taking time off. Push back on unreasonable clients instead of letting CSMs get steamrolled and not advocate for CMs. Accept less of those huge one-off projects. They're poorly scoped and always come with unreasonable workloads and deadlines. Stop being hardasses on delivery dates. Most of our clients don't care as long as we communicate. There's no such thing as a content marketing emergency; stop manufacturing them. All it does is put pressure on everyone working on content to work faster and spend less time doing intentional, meaningful work. Create accountability for the C-suite. If we have to prove everything that we've done in a month, and fight to get credit for our work, leadership should prove the results of what they work on too. More than just the $$ numbers and action tours to talk about what you should do. Outline the exact action items you've done every month and plan to do next month. And maybe, consider picking up a credit of work each quarter to see just how much work goes into writing just one Animalz-quality article. I believe that Tara, the new interim CEO, is well-intentioned and trying her best to improve conditions at the company. I hope that she puts her money where her mouth is, and makes Animalz a great place to work again. I hope that she recognizes this review as the voicing of valid concerns from someone who genuinely wants to see the people at Animalz thrive. Otherwise, Animalz will continue to lose their best and brightest to tech companies like our customers -- or even other content marketing agencies.

Pros

great support amoung the team, very flexible working hours

Cons

there needs to be more editors.