Great co-workers but toxic and unstable environment and exploitation of cheap labour - Anonymous employee Intrigue Media Employee Review

Intrigue very much felt like a startup environment despite having been in business for more than 15 years. Constant changes to processes, team members, and approaches to marketing made the job feel incredibly unstable. It has been almost a year since I left, and I still feel like I’m recovering from the experience. The workload was absolutely unsustainable. I had constant anxiety surrounding both the volume of work and the expectations placed to keep up with it. At first, I thought I simply wasn’t cut out for the job. But after speaking with others who had worked at Intrigue before me, I realized my experience was not at all unique. In my experience, the company tends to hire young people who are fresh out of university or college, pay them very low salaries while describing the compensation as industry competitive (it's not, it's LOW), and then push them to their limits. The response to concerns about workload or stress often seems to be that “this place isn’t for everyone.” A convenient phrase to avoid any real ownership or accountability to issues raised by your team. The workload itself is not sustainable. Unlimited vacation time doesn't make a difference when you have a mountain of work to return to. When one overwhelmed employee leaves, there always seemed to be another young, inexperienced person ready to take their place. It's gross. I saw another review describe Intrigue as a revolving door, and that description strongly reflects my experience. Whether intentional or not, the result is a system that keeps salaries low, expectations high, and employees replaceable. There are a lot of genuinely great people working at Intrigue. Unfortunately, many of them seem unable or unwilling to speak up or challenge what I experienced as an obviously toxic environment created by the company’s founders.