Pros
Super smart design talent, nice office space in PDX
Cons
Instrument has talented individual contributors, but the organizational issues are hard to ignore. Over the last few years, the company has made a series of truly baffling leadership decisions, including multiple rounds of layoffs that were poorly handled and deeply destabilizing. One round was so mismanaged that a client discovered their team had been laid off only when they noticed account deactivations in shared Slack channels. That alone says everything about the level of operational rigor in place.
The company also struggles significantly with diversity, particularly at the senior level. There are few POC leaders in senior leadership, and the executive decision-making group is composed almost entirely of people who have spent their entire careers at Instrument. That limited perspective shows up everywhere, from how the business is run to the insular group of friends and family they recruit for open roles.
Operationally, Instrument functions like an agency on its first day of existence. There's no process or structure, no department leads, and no consistent frameworks for planning, resourcing, performance, or delivery. Producers are left to invent their own ways of working for each project because there is no organizational support system. For a company this size, it is astonishing how little foundational infrastructure exists.
Instrument has strong creative talent, but the lack of leadership diversity, weak operational maturity, and repeated mishandling of major decisions make it an increasingly difficult place to build a stable, sustainable career.