Pros
- Cool office spaces - well designed office spaces with all of the perks, in-house barista, cocktail bar, DJ booth, Karaoke, Pool table, Ping Pong table, PlayStation, even an F1 driving simulator. - Fun and creative social events and Christmas parties. - There are some very smart and technical people working there. The best in the business. - They do some cool creative/brand work and there are interesting clients to work on. - You get to work on a lot different types of clients and projects. - A great way to up-skill on certain tech - e.g. Google products, Adobe etc. - Extensive training program and lots of knowledge sharing internally. - Amazing perks - company phone + plan paid for, health insurance, free coffee, weekly free lunches, anniversary gifts, excellent parental leave policy - probably even better perks than Google. - Things move VERY fast, so there is never a dull moment. - The days go pretty quick, as there is always something to keep you busy. - People seem to be pretty passionate about the work they’re doing and the projects they’re working on. - The company wins lots of industry awards and has a pretty solid reputation within the industry. - A lot of internal promotion and opportunities to move around within the company, depending on the type of work you do. A great place for career progression. - Good banter and office culture, lots of funny people working there. - Pay is pretty good but it comes with heavy responsibility.
Cons
- Abuse of meetings - This company loves a meeting, your calendar ends up packed with inefficient meetings that could have been an email. - Likewise with the use of Slack. It is abused constantly and creates a lot of inefficiency. - Lots of micromanagers - Managers aren’t really proper managers and it often feels like they are competing with you. - Overly complex projects - leadership puts pressure on to over sell big complex projects to clients that haven’t been proven, so they inevitably fail and you’re left picking up the pieces. As a result, projects are under scoped constantly, lose the company a lot of money and you spend a lot of time in damage control trying to patch things up with the client. Every wants to pat themselves on the back whilst things are going well, but when things go badly suddenly everyone disappears. - Project Management jargon used but not followed - stand-ups aren’t really used properly, project managers don’t know what they’re doing. Lack of accountability. - Lack of proper processes around things like billing and contracts causes a lot of headaches. People in junior roles are responsible for some pretty complex tasks and expected to get it right without the proper processes to follow. - Culture suffered massively post-merger (MightyHive days Vs after the S4/Media.Monks acquisition). It was more of a start-up vibe until around 2020. Since then it has felt like any other big agency. - A certain type of person is preferred and promoted. Lots of big personalities and people trying to be the funniest person in the room. Introverts and quiet achievers aren’t really celebrated. - Morale is low due to recent lay-offs, people are overworked and get stuck on difficult project/clients that they can’t move on from. - Lay-offs are happening in some departments, yet there is still an office barista which makes no sense. - They keep saying they’re not an agency, but then go out and do all the things that the big holding cos do. - S4 Capital bought a tonne of companies in a short space of time, without any real direction for how they would work together. This created a lot of overlap of roles and confusion within the leadership team. - Surveillance of employees - swipe/access cards are checked to monitor attendance and then you get hassled about why you didn’t swipe in. - So much time wasted on formatting/polishing Google Slides/Powerpoint presentations that sometimes don’t even get presented properly. - Sir Martin Sorrell has a weird cult-like following within the company. - Software Engineers are overworked and get thrown on to too many projects at ones. - You have to do a lot of selling and presenting even if you aren’t in a sales role. - High pressure working with external clients that can be very demanding, extremely stressful working environment. - Some roles which should be onsite are done remotely - e.g. IT, office managers, so employees are left to figure things out on their own. - They will spend a lot of time telling you how much your mental health is important to them, whilst knowing they are overworking you and burning you out.