The Whole Company's Job is to Coddle the Owner
Pros
The pay is decent and you get to occasionally work on some cool projects, though management is pretty good at sucking out any joy you might find in your work, and creativity and new ideas are stifled. The people who actually do the work in this company (not the management) are generally really great people to work with and very good at what they do. This company seems to have a knack for regularly hiring good people and then chasing them out the door with their horrific management style. Some of the most talented creative people in the area work and have worked here and this company consistently takes them for granted and treats them like cogs in a machine until they get frustrated and leave. It's really tragic. This company likes to cultivate an image of being a cool hip media company that’s fun to work for, and very occasionally that facade holds for a moment and it’s a nice place to work, but under the surface it is a very different company, and the longer you work here the more you will experience it’s dark undercurrent.
Cons
The many problems this company has begin and end with the owner (as summarized in the title of this review). The owner is erratic, unpredictable, overbearing and manages to somehow simultaneously be a micro-manager and a very poor communicator when he's around. He's prone to sudden outbursts of anger or annoyance that send the whole company into a frenzied attempt to satisfy his whims for fear of being suddenly fired (he likes to throw around threats of being fired very freely). The atmosphere when the owner is around is that of frantic terror, as if some juvenile deity had decided they were going to start randomly burning people alive until they were given what they want. The entire management team does nothing about the childish tantrums that the owner likes to throw and instead have developed an entire culture around making excuses for him and enabling this behavior. Nothing is ever his fault, every problem is blamed on the employees, even when the employees were not given what they need to do their job. I think there are good people in the management team, but they don't act like they should. They have all been whipped into shape with either the threat of being fired or the promise of money (or both) and they will all fall in line behind him when he wants something, regardless of what actually needs to be done. It's terrifying. It's like a weird cult where the owner has remade the management team in his own image. When the owner is gone things are better but his toxic influence remains. His management style is the definition of seagull management (look it up) where he is gone for long periods of time and then suddenly appears and makes everyone's life hell for a few days and then leaves again, but even when he’s gone the middle management team perpetuates a toxic work environment by doing things like dumping projects on their employees at the last minute that they knew about months ago, or requesting endless revisions that don’t come from the client just to make themselves feel important. This workplace culture makes it incredibly hard to get what you need to do your job. Because of the owner's reputation for erratic behavior and emotional outbursts no one wants to talk to him, even when he's around, so if you put in a request for something you need for your job it may not even be communicated with the one who has to sign off on it (the owner) until months later and even then it's subject to whether he thinks it's important. While I worked here my team tried desperately to update the very outdated production style this company had, but it was a losing battle because any changes had to be approved by the owner and he was impossible to communicate with. He doesn't answer phone calls or emails, and if he does it's with 1-2 word replies, and he will blow off almost any meeting you schedule with him unless it's something that he arbitrarily deems important. Meanwhile, the employees get chastised for not "being professional enough", and are told that we have to be "really on top of things" to make up for the owner's lack of communication and planning, because nothing is ever the owner's fault and he's treated like a spoiled toddler with behavioral issues and coddling parents. The whole thing is thick with irony. This is a horrible place to work and will remain that way until either middle management has the guts to actually stand up to the owner and fight for their employees or he leaves the company to someone else. They have gained such a reputation that no one who’s local will work for them and they’ve started to hire people from out of state. Do not work here.
