Engage is a typical DC-style digital agency. You should know what that means before you interview. If you’re not a fit for that lifestyle, you won’t be happy at Engage.
The DC agency lifestyle: work hard, do over time, use your PTO to recover from burnout, repeat. Profit over quality. Perception over reality.
A peek into 2020: multiple employees stress-cried on calls and outside of work. I’m a grown adult and I cried more than once on weekends. Real physical health problems from year-long overtime and high stress. During crunch periods, employees working through weekends was an expectation. You’d get guilted if you didn’t. To my complete shock, I was once put on the schedule to work after waking up from a 24 hour work day. Another time I asked for a Sunday off and had to explain why I needed it.. I had worked 10 days straight at that point.
Engage rates low on moral value and integrity. Client perception is more important than honesty (I won’t document specifics here, use your imagination). My annual review was months late and paid a 0% raise. I’ve had multiple promises of a raise but the goal post always got moved farther away. Anything of value needs to get put into writing.
Culture at Engage is rife in politics and distrust. Higher level staff push their preferred narrative and blame others in various ways. It’s not uncommon to see someone create multiple 1 on 1 meetings so they can set a narrative and blame someone, instead of having a group meeting. I’ve been directly thanked for my work and had the person admit self fault, just to hear from leadership a completely different story was told to them and I was thrown under the bus. “Well X told me Y so I don't know what you're talking about” is a phrase I heard too often.. It's just not a fun environment.
The leadership team doesn’t reliably interact with the company. One of the two partners the team is afraid to interact with, and I’ve never had a real conversation with. The second partner often operates in chaos: having an excuse for being late with no notice or not making good on a promise. Our meetings I took as suggestions only.
The reason I’m posting this is because I fear someone not a fit for this environment signs on and becomes morbidly depressed like I did. I will leave you with inspiration: companies exist that will value your time. Even if you are in a difficult spot financially, hold out as long as you can to find a place where you feel valued, where you call your coworkers and manager great friends.
I learned so much at Engage, lessons I could never learn elsewhere, but many were lessons on what not to do and how to set boundaries.
