Pros
Most of the staff is great. The benefits and pay are decent I thought this was the best firm I had ever worked for- until Covid hit.
Cons
The challenges of the pandemic have revealed that the leaders of this firm are gutless hypocrites. Despite always talking about how important their staff were, striving to have a "commitment" culture, calling us a "family," touting their benefits, hosting workshops on "respect" in the workplace, literally calling themselves "good people," having internal value slogans such as, "humanity before vanity," and "courage before complacency," they really see their staff as disposable and have no real respect for them or can bother to treat them humanely when times get tough. They laid off 11 of us (including 2 dads and 1 mom of young children/babies,) at the very start of the COVID lock down- after one week of working remotely. They were approved for their PPP money about a month later. No leaders or managers/supervisors took part in delivering the news- only the HR person and staffing person (who is the most notorious person in the office for saying insensitive things) called us. No attempt was made to do it in a more empathetic, respectful, compassionate or decent way. Then they sent out one short, tone deaf all staff email. Very little explanation was given though the firm has claimed to be all about transparency. Who was chosen seemed very arbitrary-some people had projects wrapping up, others were very busy. It just seems like they let the studio directors pick the people they didn't like. The severance package was so insulting- 2 weeks of pay and a month of healthcare for people that had been there many years- that more than a few people didn't take it. And that was it- no other support was offered, we were treated like pariahs, like we had been fired and not laid off for some reason- they didn't offer to write recommendation letters, didn't offer to try to help us make connections, didn't even add us to their networks on LinkedIn or acknowledge us in any way, didn't treat us like colleagues at all. It was just completely callous, shocking, and a full betrayal of what they claimed their values were. They did everything they could to avoid having to recognize the humanity in us and the stressful, frightening situation they were putting us in. Now, a year later they are on a whitewashing press/social media blitz, and just can't keep themselves from their old value signaling- promoting the new female CEO and tooting their horn about their benefits again, for women especially, and their efforts to achieve gender pay equity/ parity, all while neglecting to address the 6 women (and 5 men) they took jobs away from last year. Taking jobs away from women has a greater negative impact on equity overall. And clearly it is just a vanity project (and a good excuse to make a woman the CEO,) because if they truly cared about equity for women in the field, they would have done something to help the women they laid off get back to work or to compensate for their loss by maybe hiring women from the unemployed pool instead of treating them like collateral damage and contributing to the stigma of being laid off. At least 2 of the women that were laid off were so fed up with how they were treated that they left or are trying to leave the field altogether. Some of the rest are still unemployed or under-employed (as are some of the men.) It's one thing to try to keep current female employees from leaving the field and treat them fairly, but the damage that has already been done needs to be repaired before they should start congratulating themselves. It's really offensive that after treating us like less than dirt they now want to pretend we never existed. The sad part is from what I have heard from people still working there, they are almost all miserable anyways. I've been told by multiple people that I was lucky to have been laid off rather than still working there.