Revolving door of young idealists - Anonymous employee M+R Employee Review

I am a lower-level employee (online associate), so most of my criticism focuses on this type of role and the visible disconnect from the rest of the staff. Employee turnover is extremely high for associates. It’s difficult to ascertain how high it is unless you work here, because most people who quit or get pushed out will leave at the six month mark, and won’t list this job on a resume/LinkedIn. At least ten new people have started and left in the span of time I’ve worked here. I think the extreme turnover is a result of: 1) A huge disconnect between HR and the various teams. The HTML and data manipulation “tests” in the hiring process are much simpler than the type of web development work most online associates are doing. It’s not enough to have “basic HTML/CSS skills”. I cannot recommend taking this job if you have no experience in HTML/CSS specific to emails, various CRMs, Javascript, Java APIs, or the QA side of technical project management, because these are the tasks you’ll actually be doing. 2) Unrealistic performance expectations. M+R will pitch a client project for x amount of hours without taking into account staffing needs (the company is chronically understaffed), and the hours are not sustainable long term for many people. 3) Toxic “top-down” culture. I have no idea if this is normal or not because M+R is the first and last agency I’ll work for, but lower-level employees take all of the blame if something goes wrong, regardless of who made a mistake (to the tune of getting berated on client conference calls). I guess this is useful from a client management perspective, because it makes the VP level folks seem more intelligent? 4) Total disconnect between the management and other employees. The senior level staff devote hours to passion projects within the agency, which is difficult to justify given how understaffed every team is. It seems like management doesn’t have an accurate idea of the associate level workload - projects are completed and passed up the chain for review, then re-done, then re-done again with arbitrary changes (ex. the colors in this document need to be cerulean blue, not aqua blue, so the entire thing needs to be revised). Again, this piece of criticism may be typical of most agencies. 5) Culture fit. The office culture emulates “work hard play hard”, and tries to adopt other aspects of trendy startup culture (but most of the “fun” meetings or events are mandatory). There is an online “M+R dictionary”, with company-specific language and acronyms. The day technically winds down at 6pm, but people are usually in the office working at their standing desks until 8. People are nice in general, but there is a not-insignificant amount of backbiting in the competition for promotions, which is exhausting.