Carnegie Dartlet Reviews

Where do I even start? All of the recent 1- and 2-star reviews are 100% spot on. This place is so chaotic and dysfunctional that it truly boggles the mind. Extremely top-heavy org structure with incompetent, inexperienced, and cliquey upper management. A culture of favoritism where some people get promoted repeatedly and others languish as perpetual individual contributors. Little to no diversity org-wide but especially in leadership positions — visit our website to see for yourself. Constant acquisitions without any meaningful effort to integrate the new companies into our structure and workflow. Incessant reorgs and restructures that throw our teams into tailspins, especially in client management. The amount of change is dizzying and exhausting and we are gaslit or accused of not being team players when we rightly complain. To top all of this off, we are paid well below market rate and everyone knows it but the company doesn’t seem to have any intention of changing it. Raises are laughable and are effectively reductions in the context of inflation. To boot, our workloads are absolutely outrageous. We are working far beyond our contracted hours and keep sounding the burnout alarm but it falls on deaf ears. There is 0 transparency with resourcing and we all seem to continue accumulating accounts with no end in sight. Lastly, there have been several rounds of layoffs over the past year, each of which has been handled extremely callously. The lack of dignity and respect shown to us is so shameful. Every person I have spoken to here is struggling in one way or another. People regularly set their Slack statuses to “drowning” or “overwhelmed” or “SOS” and management doesn’t blink an eye. Please don’t bother applying here. I have no faith that our leadership will ever accept responsibility for the mess they’ve created. Whatever pads the pockets of our private equity investors, I guess.

What happens when a company touting their “people first” ethos sells out to private equity? The slow death of what made Carnegie a great place to work. In the past I was happy to recommend open positions to my network as Carnegie felt like a rare gem in the agency landscape, but today I would not share an open role with anyone. The openings are there because talented people are fleeing the high-stress/low stability work environment or are dismissed from the company with little compassion or explanation. One day they’re a green bubble on slack, and the next they’re like a ghost who you’re not allowed to ask about. Every day a new team member departure is announced and that, coupled with steadily dropping morale in the last ~10 months from constant restructures and lack of basic human empathy, leads to a workplace where cheer feels forced. Company “events” feel like mandatory places where you need to show how much you love it here even if the reality of your day is far from the “people first” workplace they talk about. Even if you are insulated in a smaller team or with good direct managers, the constant restructures and firings lead to a lot of stress and feeling like the company is spinning its wheels. It’s demoralizing point blank. As other reviews have alluded to, it feels like the same 10 people constantly get promoted to new roles while others are passed over. As Carnegie acquires new companies it also frequently fires their leadership after a few months once they wring out any industry good will or novel approaches - taking what they’ve built over years and discarding them like used batteries who have been sucked dry. The writing is on the wall that Carnegie cares more for its profits and benefiting the private equity firm than taking care of its employees. A place that once felt like a breath of fresh air now has the corporate stink.