Animalz Employee Reviews about "training"

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.)

Pros

Really strong focus on positive work culture (lovely people). Excellent opportunities for training and career growth, transparency in terms of which team members earn what salary and how to get promoted to a higher salary level. Pretty flat structure. Extremely strict and talented editors (that's a good thing), and managers who genuinely care.

Cons

Can be a heavy workload for the uninitiated, but manageable and well-compensated. Clients, as others have pointed out, could be a challenge. I found the job a bit stressful sometimes.

Pros

You'll be surrounded by people who care about content marketing and writing. You'll be working on a 100% remote team, so you have flexible hours.

Cons

The company grew too fast and is still catching up on defining roles and developing processes-- as a result, quality and communication suffered and customers are churning in droves. The cobbled-together internal systems are breaking and you'll spend a lot of time troubleshooting. There's no investment in ongoing training and development beyond employee onboarding and senior leadership takes a top-down approach to problem-solving instead of bringing in the voices of people on the ground. All the teams work in their own siloes and it's rare to see transparency and collaboration across teams. The goalposts of what it takes to advance in your career are constantly shifting. All of this adds up to burnout.

Pros

Filled with great writers and editors to learn from.

Cons

Everything else. The pay is substandard, especially for content writers – the people making the actual product Animalz is selling. Content writers with any experience at all can find better pay pretty much anywhere in the current market. Animalz charges clients a king’s ransom for blogs and articles, but none of that seems to leak down to the writers. That gap is puzzling, until you see how many vice presidents, directors, and managers are stuffed into the company hierarchy. Benefits aren’t great if you’re on your own, and they’re terrible if you have a spouse or dependents. The company is clearly operating on the “hope your spouse has better benefits” philosophy of employee healthcare. The workload is extreme and is getting worse. Animalz used to pride itself on quality work, but the writers these days are given such a massive production goal that quality is noticeably slipping. And by noticeable, I mean the clients are noticing, and are subsequently churning. Worse, writers are scolded like puppies if they fall behind on production, and are said to be “letting down the team.” That management is letting down their team of writers doesn’t come up very often. When writers fall behind on these extreme production goals, work is often outsourced to freelancers who aren’t given the time, prompts, or editing support to create quality material. And so standards fall further. They won’t hire new editors at a rate commensurate with increased clients or workloads, and so standards fall even more. They really do have top talent at this agency, but management isn’t providing the framework to support them. And more of these talented individuals are leaving every day, realizing how much more money (and how much less stress) can be found out in the market right now. Onboarding was never great and appears to be getting worse, with little-to-no training on the 12+ apps the company uses. The internal organization is a mess because of it, with information being kept on random spreadsheets instead of inputted into the appropriate app with a funny animal name. All forms of dissent in the company Slack are quashed as “complaining” instead of addressed. Public call outs are becoming more frequent, where employees who made mistakes are tagged in public Slack channels with passive-aggressive messages. Morale is in the toilet, perhaps rightly so, with an everpresent air of “who is being fired or quitting next.” Lastly, and perhaps most disappointingly, Animalz is one of those companies that puts forward a progressive veneer with nothing behind it, like the storefronts on an Old West movie set. Unlimited vacation days don’t mean much when you get fired after taking them, nevermind that you have to find and coordinate freelancers yourself should you deign to take a couple days off. Which is even more frustrating, since some upper-level positions have very discreetly been given four day workweeks. There’s no true dialog with management, company all-hands meetings are basically recitals for C-Suite business jargon performances, and struggling employees are given little help. For a business based around communication, you’ll find none here.

Pros

- Truly gifted editors. Working at Animalz will supercharge anyone's writing, research, and SEO chops. It's like going to college except you get paid. - The chance to work with some big brands and network with tech execs. - Diverse team - super interesting people work here from all over the world. Makes the world seem less polarized and scary. - Flexibility - you can work pretty much wherever and whenever you want as long as you can get all your work done (which brings me to the cons...)

Cons

- Animalz wants really badly to be like the tech companies they serve, so they treat their people like machines. They literally refer to what they do as a 'product' instead of a service. This may seem fairly innocuous at first. It may even seem exciting, edgy, and new. But then after a few months, you'll realize that all leadership truly cares about is writers producing a ton of content for a tiny fraction of what customers pay the agency. You may develop close relationships with people at this company, but it will be done on your own time and you'll have to work for it. Otherwise, you're just a cog in the machine. - Extremely top-heavy. There are too many leaders and executives (friends of the CEO) and not enough people doing work. If you want to be talked down to and urged to constantly do more work by people with less experience in the industry than you, then maybe this is a good place. For everyone else, it's difficult to stomach. - Non-writing work is unaccounted for. Writers do much more than write - they meet with the customers (as well as their own teams), create their own briefs, research, outline, and optimize articles. They respond to customer feedback, create reports, and shepherd all their work through multiple rounds of revision and multiple steps of delivery as requested by customers, leadership, team leads, and editors. None of this work is accounted for in their workload. - Zero training for difficult subject matter. Some clients at Animalz are easy to write for, but many require technical expertise and/or a ton of research. And no one is trained on how to write on these technical topics. Leaders assume writers will just figure it out on their own time. If you fall behind on your workload, you have to make that up by working late, on weekends, or on vacation. This pace of work becomes extremely difficult to balance with the high writing standards of the agency and the high quality expectations of the clients who pay a premium price for this 'product' and expect writers to deliver on promises they aren't equipped for. The result is employees burn out, and clients churn. - Low pay and few benefits for the industry. At first glance, the pay at Animalz may seem fair. But when you factor in the time and expertise required, most writers will be better off elsewhere, either as an in-house writer or a freelancer. Animalz doesn't offer retirement matching. They also recently switched to an unlimited vacation model, which will only harm people with mental health issues, family responsibilities, or difficult clients because they won't be able to take any time off if they aren't meeting production quotas. - Gaslighting is common. When people have problems or bring up a concern, they are routinely told the problem doesn't exist and no one else has that concern. - Few REAL advancement opportunities. Right now, clients are leaving. Many tech companies and startups which Animalz serves are cutting their marketing spend, and first up on the chopping block is their expensive content machine (Animalz). This reality, plus the burnout that writers constantly undergo, means that you're unlikely to meeting your production goals to warrant a promotion, and even if you ARE able to meet all your production goals, the company's revenue may not be able to support your promotion anytime soon because they are trying so hard to improve their financial situation.

Pros

Maybe I missed the growing pains, but I'm not sure where the negative reviews come from. I joined the team in 2021 and I can honestly say that this is the first job I've taken in a LONG time where I haven't been looking on Indeed/LinkedIn a few months in to see what else is out there due to issues in the company. I plan on being here as long as they'll have me! Everyone I've met has been supportive and as helpful as they can be. I have not experienced any sort of 'toxic' and believe me, I have worked in some incredibly toxic companies before so I'd point it out if it existed. The negative reviews on here claim that the CMs are overworked, but I haven't felt that way at all. This is the first content marketing job I've had where they place an emphasis on your writing quality instead of quantity, and it's incredibly refreshing. As a CM, you'll work with an editor who challenges you and helps you spot your weaknesses so that you can grow as a writer. You'll also have a team lead to help you with any impediments and help you reach the OKRs you set for yourself. Yes, you do work directly with customers, and yes, you are responsible for the relationship, but they're working to bring in customer success managers to help take some of that off the CM's plate. I personally think it's good to work directly with the customers so that as the writer, you can establish that relationship with them and ultimately create better content. Management is also very accessible. I saw a review on here that said the CEO doesn't answer questions during office hours meetings, and that hasn't been my experience at all. Any time I've attended an office hours meeting, she's read each question and answered it as thoroughly as possible or handed it over to someone who could answer better than she could. They also encourage us to reach out via Slack or even set up a meeting with them if we need anything. If you're wanting a job where you have the ability to grow and focus on your writing, then I think you'd love it here. Other pros include: - flex schedule (great for parents especially) - 4 weeks of PTO + 5 floating holidays (first place I've worked that gives this much PTO!) - unlimited sick time/personal days (like, you can actually be sick and not have to use your PTO. amazing.) - decent benefits - 401K - detailed onboarding training

Cons

Just to keep it real, these would be the cons I've experienced: - dependent coverage is expensive - it can be overwhelming at first to learn all the processes (but that's true of any job) - you don't have any input on the clients you're assigned, which can be frustrating at times especially if you don't have existing knowledge of their field/they're more technical than what you're used to - when you work at a place with employees across the globe, it can take longer than what you're used to in a typical company to get answers to a question

Pros

If you’re someone who’s terrific at context switching, and a very competent (and patient) writer, Animalz was once a pretty neat gig. The pay was and remains awful relative to US market rates, but the previously high-trust, low-oversight management approach meant it used to be easy for skilled people to do work and own their own calendars by-and-large. This made the place a mecca for people who worked to live, instead of those who live to work, and for people who had other projects/businesses/side-hustles to also give their attentions to. However, I am currently talking about a completely different company (the Animalz of the past) than the one I am about to talk about (the Animalz of the more-recent-past and present).

Cons

Animalz is an absolute textbook of mismanagement – in my time the company went from being in a position of imperious advantage through the COVID period to being in an absolute death spiral now. The company is awash in cynicism at every level. Shocking rates of pay compared to market averages. No-clue leadership team rinsing the company for massive salaries and reciting Monty Python bits during All-Hands despite catastrophic staff churn and client churn. Product announcements than come to nothing. Deafeningly insensitive attempts at DEI. If you’re a writer here you’ll pretty quickly start wondering why you’re doing a lot of customer success and strategy work, despite the fact that: there is almost certainly a CSM and a strategist on your team; they both get paid more than you; and, in the present climate, their jobs are more secure than yours. Idiotic org chart management has plagued Animalz for two years at least while prior management play-acted that the company – a standard-issue content farm – was actually a technology startup. CSMs, for instance, are redundant for a company that sells something so simple and that most clients, unfortunately, treat as a tiresome irrelevance anyway. No one in the ‘product’ division ever had a clue about product, and the Animalz array remained sadly undiversified despite the fact that the company would now be printing money if they’d invested in, say, video content during the pandemic. As with all mismanaged companies, incentives for Animalz employees are absolutely all over the place. Knowing that there’s not enough work to go around, the leadership team decided to impose production quotas. This was such a self-own that, despite the initiative ostensibly being put in place to increase output, it led to the company firing or downgrading a number of their best people just because they hadn’t been given enough work during a given month to meet quota or, as is incredibly frequently the case, because the work they’d done had been improperly billed. Animalz has no institutional memory and does not account for historical productivity; it arbitrarily assigned a uniform quota, and anyone who was below it after a couple months was sent to the slaughterhouse, irrespective of specific circumstances (including being on vacation, illness etc.). Again, these quotas are mandated despite: a) a lack of available work b) a lack of training for new CMs, several of whom I mentored and who had horrific experiences here c) imbalanced distribution of duties among the team, so that CM workloads frequently get overwhelming, while non-CMs bear no responsibility whatsoever for deliverables or performance d) the fact that you as a writer are not even going to be paid market rate for your experience or skills, while doing 2.5 jobs, at least This complete waking nightmare for writers is not made any easier by Animalz’s pointlessly over-elaborated editing schema. While individual editors here are good at what they do, the editing norms at Animalz appear to take it as given that all of the company’s writers can’t write, and that all of the readers of the company’s work aren’t bright enough to understand even the most familiar turns of figurative language. Not a good basis for getting the best possible work out of your writing stable. Training and institutional knowledge access are both non-existent. I’d be astonished if the company still exists for all intents and purposes in a year – best case scenario it will have morphed into an AI content farm (a Christmas which a great many of the more turkey-minded staff seem weirdly enthusiastic about). Plenty of other perfectly good writers will have been ground through the mill by then, whatever the outcome.