You must be a self-starter with good communication skills to work here or you'll get walked all over. The favoritism from management and talking behind peoples backs in such a small company gets old pretty fast.
"Business-savvy" CEO manipulates employees and uses scare tactics to get things her way (especially with older employees). Majority of employees are visibly unhappy and unfulfilled, as management does not invest in professional development or improving a negative company culture of "overworked and underpaid." The company does not invest in employees via more competitive salaries, higher salaries for long-term employees (is not known to exceed mid $50k), over-time bonuses, sending team members to conferences, etc. Instead of training someone internally or offering overtime, the company often hires contractors to complete tasks and pays them 3x or more what FT employees make. They also blame employees' lack of skill development on time management, saying an employee can do individual research to be self-taught, plus attend all meetings and get work done in 40 hours. If not, they encourage trainings to be completed outside of the 40 hours. There is no work-life balance. The company could also better streamline products/apps/services for consistent, updated standards for all employees to use. This is one of many onboarding issues for new employees, as there is no internal Human Resources.
Employees are often shushed or publically reprimanded after giving opinions in team meetings. They have also been used as public examples of mistakes and forced to tell their own story of failure. It makes it very uncomfortable.
Projects never get done on time (or too tight to the deadline, causing work outside of regular 9-5 hours), because the CEO is overly involved in all retainer clients or clients she sees growing into one. She doesn't have enough time to review work or emails, but must be the final say before sending project drafts/finals to clients. CEO also often comes up with the concepts, so there's not much room to be creative in campaigns. Employees are basically overworked machines cranking out sub-par work quickly.
CEO shushes employees when they try to speak up during client meetings (in person and on the phone), however, employees are expected to manage clients on their own and know exactly what is going on the rest of the time. It leads to clients not respecting employees, and only wanting to hear from CEO.
Consistently a fight with management about long-term goals (for example, they ask "What do you want to do?" but nothing changes because business needs aren't met and they're understaffed). CEO has a way of looking at you that makes you feel small and useless. She loves to make employees cry. Management will call/email/text during nights and weekends. Found myself on computer 12+ hours per day.
CEO can't even get employee names right most of the time. Probably because there is so much turnover.
