Pros
Work-life balance is much better than other agencies. I rarely have to stay late and coworkers generally respect each-others work hours. Unlimited PTO is a plus and there is a soft-close the week between Christmas and New Years. Most of the staff here are pleasant to work with and are generally nice people.
Cons
Where do I even start? I used to love working here and would rave about it to everyone, but things have gone downhill fast over the past year or so. After multiple messy mergers/acquisitions, leadership changes, and company re-orgs, Assembly is a hollow shell of what it once was. Make sure to do you research so you know what you would be getting yourself into. Stagwell is Assembly's holding company and is suffering big time financially - search the ticker symbol STGW to see for yourself. The rest of the market and other agency holding companies are doing well YoY, but Stagwell is down over 10%. The investors see the writing on the wall and so do us employees. Assembly leadership used to be transparent and respected by the staff, but that is sadly no longer the case. They flip-flop constantly on major decisions and are generally shady about going-ons at the company. Recently a chunk of the finance team was was let go without any notice to those that work with them, and rumors quickly started to swirl about layoffs. The North American CEO promised on a town hall they would send out an update of what happened, but we have not heard a word about this, even weeks later. They also say they appreciate us as employees, but this could not be further from the truth. Last year they withheld our pay increases for months after they were promised, since the company was/is struggling financially. Rather than be transparent about it, they let rumors fly and swept it under the rug. This is also the first company I worked for that gave its employees absolutely nothing for the holidays - not even a mug or a $5 gift card. If you work here, expect to be treated as a financial number to be cut rather than a person. I could keep going, but you get the point. There is also a huge lack of accountability at this company. No one is held responsible for what that they do/don't do, and it shows. Work is often done sloppily and with a lack of effort, simply because people have generally stopped caring. Management is more concerned about timesheets to figure out who to cut next rather than actually supporting the employees who put out great quality work (or actually providing consequences for those who grossly underdeliver). Please avoid Assembly if you have any work ethic whatsoever and want to be respected and valued by the higher-ups. They are also starting yet another re-org this year and have openly said multiple times that it is going to be messy, so yet another reason not to jump on this sinking ship.
