Avoid at all costs - Video Editor digiio Employee Review

digiio is a chaotic, poorly run and toxic agency. It was an absolute displeasure working there every single day. Every morning I walked into the office was a negative and depressing moment. There is huge distrust, dishonesty and a lack of professionalism between colleagues and senior members of staff. This creates a work environment that has no structure, leaves you unable to develop your skillset and leaves you feeling stuck in the job. As a Video Editor, the signs of a lack of workflow, lack of respect for employees and complete incompetence in management were apparent on my very first day nearly 2 years ago. Not a single thing changed or evolved throughout my tenure at digiio, nor will it ever. digiio is a relic, an agency stuck 20 years in the past and the work produced by them speaks to the amateurish preparation/planning, communication and workflow across every project. As a Video Editor, you can forget about being briefed on a project or any real conversation with any colleagues about upcoming/active projects and what’s needed to ensure you are set up for success. 9 times out of 10 you will be told 2 hours into the work day “you’re working on this today” along with “I can share some past examples with you” and off you go. It’s pathetic, but it’s the digiio way. You will then finish your edit only for it to land on the CEO’s desk. Despite the CEO not knowing or being involved in the project at all, she will have the final say on the project as she “knows what these things should look like”. In reality, the CEO has no experience, expertise or knowledge in Video Production and will take apart the edit with no understanding of what they are looking at whilst also failing to understand how utterly unprofessional and frustrating it is for someone to jump in at the very last moment whilst having no brief or understanding of what the project is and change what they personally want. The CEO has no people or leadership skills and has no business leading anyone on anything whatsoever. The CEO is quick to blame other people for her own mistakes and poor management and is well-known to talk negatively about colleagues behind their backs (in which they do the exact same to her). The CEO is also known to exploit and use colleagues as much as she can for both work-related things and her own personal errands. Unpaid overtime, humiliating colleagues on the spot in front of the whole team, shouting across the room at colleagues if they make a mistake, talks down to and belittles colleagues daily, will cut you off mid-sentence almost every time you speak, goes missing for several days during crucial times where leadership is needed and just simply has an appalling attitude towards the people who actually run her agency. Ultimately digiio’s toxic environment and poor workflow come directly from the CEO, who rules over everything at the agency with an iron fist. The CEO is one of the rudest, patronising and most disrespectful human beings I have ever met in my life. She is completely disconnected and disliked by the entire team and the bickering and moaning about her amongst other employees start the minute she leaves the room. Video Editing is what I have dedicated my life to and digiio is the only place I’ve ever encountered where I could feel myself fall out of love with editing. The non-existent support on projects, the chaotic review system, the zero celebrated success, the walking away from you mid-conversation as some weird sort of power move to pick up a piece of fruit the other side of the room (that actually happens) and the complete incompetence from the CEO. Almost every video I worked on at digiio was a complete embarrassment and nowhere near good enough by my own standards. My standards and thoughts on projects of course meant nothing and I was just treated like some disposable tool in the office. Any time I would try to offer my advice on what we could do to improve the flow, structure and quality of our work or implementation of modern motion graphics was usually sniggered at or just completely ignored. The arrogance of some of the people who worked there was unbearable. This discouraging environment led me to just not speak or raise any concerns I might have with any of the seniors unless it was absolutely essential. That’s no way to work and it’s why I would not suggest working at digiio to anyone at all. It’s just not worth it, don’t do it to yourself. I’ll finish by explaining how my time at digiio came to an end. I was going about my daily tasks on what seemed to be an ordinary Monday. The CEO then left the office at around 3pm and straight after, 4 employees were called one after another into a dark room on the other side of the building for a “meeting”. There we were all suddenly told our positions were at risk due to digiio’s video work taking a backwards step (despite there being dozens of video works in the pipeline over the next 6 months which will apparently all be filmed and edited by 2 people). Two days later I had an online “final call” to discuss what on earth was going on, why I was being made redundant and what I could do to retain my job. The Senior Editor, who I thought was one of the few decent people there, decided to take the call in the middle of a busy train station, on his way to a shoot (you can’t write this stuff). Due to where this senior member took my redundancy leave call, I could barely hear a word he was saying. The lack of care and respect shown to me during my redundancy call was not surprising, but quite symbolic of the agency. Regardless, he had no answers for any of the questions I had at all and this was all obviously pre-planned by the CEO weeks ago to clear-out some people she didn’t like. To make it worse, the CEO left the country for the next 2 days so that others could do her dirty work for her and so she did not have to face or be held accountable for any of it. This whole and sudden situation has left me in an extremely vulnerable and dangerous place in regard to my living situation but that was always the risk of working there as I'm quite sure this has happened many times before. After just under 2 years of painfully hard and long work, that is what I meant to digiio. I’ll let you draw your own conclusion on the morality of that.