Advent (Tennessee) Reviews

Unfortunately, the “day in and day out” leadership from the top down are at odds with the positives to be found. This leadership has eroded the culture and positivity of working for the firm through CONSTANT “ping-ponging” shifts of process, direction, goals and business practices; usually at the whims of the CEO. His leadership is one of “spinning the narrative” to fit the situation. This constant movement gives no footing to feel firm in a direction nor security in the job. Because of this, it is a roller coaster ride and front-line workers are the casualties. There is a reality that you MUST be aware of if you accept a role at this company, and that is the cyclical nature of mass layoffs throughout its history. This is not a warning out of anger, but a mere reality that has occurred time and again (please see this is a commonality amongst the other reviews). A common discussion around the water cooler is constantly fearing for you job security. Additionally, in an unrealistic desire to be a world class creative firm, leadership steers the ship poorly in understanding how to be just a solid business. With no real creatives on the exec team, the leaders do not understand the “ins and outs” of how a project gets accomplished from the start of an idea to the final installation; only in theory, not in the actual details and function. Thus, the daily workforce is left micromanaged and at the whims of people who know less than they do about their specific duties. This is problematic in that the changes and shifts in vision often end up contradicting the very nature of effectively delivering great work. Work-life balance can be very difficult. It’s the reality of the business and the new culture. If you can swing with a business comes first perspective, you’ll be fine, but if you give an inch, Advent will take a foot. All businesses require you put in work. Just be careful here as Advent will take everything if you allow it. Lastly, the lack of diversity and quasi-religious overtones is unnerving at times. Though efforts have been spoken of, the reality is in the action, and Advent has constantly remained a very white, male, right-leaning dominated firm. If you fit into those boxes, it’s probably not a problem, but the optics and tone of that are not good externally in its market, and internally it just feels off, like something more than talk is needed.

My opinion of the firm can be best described as a ship navigated by a very distracted and oblivious captain leading a crew into a perfect storm with no life preservers and plans to abandon ship before anyone else. Overall, the leadership lacks empathy and is ignorant to what everyone actually does at the firm. Projects were challenging, but often made even more challenging through internal issues of miscommunication and a constant revolving door of employees during the entire lifecycle of active projects. Because of the very strong likelihood that there were fresh employees in attendance, the team meetings ended up feeling more like a children’s fantasy tale meets a timeshare sales pitch mixed with a TED talk on an infinite loop - or just a platform for the CEO to practice his speaking engagement side projects and push personal agendas, not company ones. Even though the CEO invites feedback or promotes an open door policy, it's difficult to get more than a few words out when in a conversation. Issues that would be brought to leadership’s attention often felt unresolved or quickly dismissed and misinterpreted. Witnessed numerous events that were branded as a “Restructure” which felt more like an irrational chid about to lose at a board game - in which the child gives an excuse to knock all the pieces over to just pick some of them back up and rearrange how they see fit without considering any consequences or adverse effects from their actions. These were often followed by insincere apologies that contributed to a growing distrust in leadership. The leadership team is in denial over the employee retention and mask it with skewed statistics. This has been a huge on-going internal issue that has been an unfortunate byproduct from the “Restructures”. It has caused major resourcing problems, stress, and unrealistic expectations with outsourcing. Daily life was plagued by an abundant number of unnecessary systems and overcomplicated processes. Each department had it’s own way of doing things with different set of sub-systems in place, ultimately contributing to misalignments and unhealthy cross-functional collaborations. For what global protocol did actually exist, was overshadowed and drowned out by the white noise of others. When resources were available, they were often wasted on planning “New and Improved” processes that were either poorly implemented, incomplete, or just completely abandoned. The culture seems to be in a constant state of flux, just like the direction in which the company is heading in. It reminds me of a squirrel in the middle of the road trying to decide which way to go when there’s a car coming.