LRW Reviews

Pros

Leadership provided and comfortable environment

Cons

Workload could be a bit much

Pros

Good experience, good teammates, opportunity to grow

Cons

Long hours, overtime, stressful, not the best pay

Pros

Very customer-oriented with highly recognized brands. There is a strong focus on and genuine emphasis on the quality of the research. Bagels brought in for employees pre-pandemic once a week. There are helpful and talented IT and Data Science folks who assist on questionnaire design and data cleaning. They have skilled graphic designers who assist on important research projects to ensure client reports are beautiful and understandable. The Century City office is located a 1 minute walk from from Westfield Century City. Promoting from within is common. Lots of structure and process which is great if you thrive on that. There are some really intelligent leaders at the company.

Cons

Lots of structure and process to get the jobs done. There is a process. The one con is that the process cannot be updated quickly or riffed on even if there are better ways. This makes the company a better fit for new college graduates as opposed to 5 or 10 year veterans from other research agencies. The structure and process is logical and minimizes mistakes, for some this is a major pro and not a con. The workload can be customer-oriented at the expense of employee work-life balance, so new associates might have to work late but look at recent reviews as those will be more accurate than mine. This may have improved in the pandemic along with remote work.

Pros

The company is filled with great people - very smart and very personable. Pre-covid, I enjoyed going to the mall for lunch or going out to happy hours. The clients are in a variety of industries and it's cool to see the different issues that everyone has and figuring out ways to solve them. Between the very smart people at the company and countless issues clients have to solve, it's a way to grow very quickly. You can go from an RA fresh out of college to a director in only a few years. As mentioned, the growth opportunity is huge. Location is extremely flexible these days which is a plus. Location of the LA office is awesome for anyone who plans on being in the office.

Cons

Everything is very dependent on what projects you're staffed on. You might have awesome clients, but a bad client can really ruin your day/week/month. Or an account manager that puts you in a bad spot. The hours can be pretty awful depending on whatever projects you're staffed on. There are also certain times of the year where it doesn't feel like you can ever sign off. This was pretty bad when everyone was in the office, but felt worse while working from home where it never felt like you ever left work.

Pros

Good experience, nice people who want to help you succeed

Cons

Long hours, associates are given very tedious tasks.

Pros

The people are very nice and almost like a family Some colleagues will try to help you learn as much as possible

Cons

Onboarding system is a mess. Some colleagues and I spent the first 3-4 months learning everything ourselves. You do not have a life outside of this job You're basically required to do overtime Sometimes it felt like people looked down on me and my skills felt constrained/limited

Pros

So much to learn about, it'll make you want to shout.

Cons

A lot seems to depend on which BU you end up on. Mine was highly dysfunctional...a mix of bad management, way too many meetings, and toxic office politics.

Pros

Good variety of projects. good coworkers.

Cons

Management is bad. Huge problem with burnout. High turnover.

Pros

I love the teams I work with, everyone is willing to explain and give guidance when needed. The people culture is definitely an emphasis here at LRW/Material+. Also great company benefits overall

Cons

I wish you could negotiate pay based on merit but can only get raise at review cycle based on position level. In order to get more pay you either have to work overtime or push yourself harder for a promotion.

Pros

I worked with super smart, super talented people. I learned a lot, fast. It can be a good place to start out your career as it’s a very well-respected company (as long as it doesn’t drive you to insanity in the process). The leaders of my team did care about me to some degree and wanted to invest in my career. You can make some great friendships, but some may be from trauma bonding…

Cons

It’s very stressful and for many people a very toxic experience. Don’t accept an offer if you have a history of anxiety or depression - it can exacerbate it, at least it did for me. The company is based on a model where they hire ambitious top talent out of undergrad and work them until they can’t do it anymore. It’s survival of the fittest - the people that can handle the environment stay and progress into management roles, but then typically have little empathy for people that are struggling with the stress and long hours. When I accepted the job I read the bad reviews on here and thought “no that won’t be me, I’m really hardworking, I’ll like it”… but no, I definitely did not enjoy my time there. It was pretty awful, really. I have some friends that have stayed at LRW and worked up the ladder, so there are at least some people that can thrive in that environment, but it’s not the norm. I also knew a lot of people completely miserable like I was…