Pros
People were generally nice. You'll see that feedback a lot about this company. But probably no nicer than anywhere else I've worked. Honestly that's about it.
Cons
Oh boy...where do I start. Everyone - and I mean everyone - is overworked and mostly underpaid. It is not unheard of for folks to work a 60-70 hr. work week there. You talk about bandwidth issues and people just shrug their shoulders. Lots of whip-cracking going on. There's a revolving door of employees, either because they were fired or the lucky ones were able to climb out of their prison cells and join the general population again. Someone asks, "what happened to Danielle," and we all know...there is no Danielle anymore. The fact that employees must pay their own way for company trips is a massive red flag. So I pay $2k out of my own pocket for your trip and then you reimburse me? That's like me going to the grocery store, getting food, eating it at home, and then paying you for it a month later. Insanity...never experienced anything like that in my life. I'd get it if they were some kind of start up outfit, but Ministry Brands is a massive operation. Classic example of private equity being CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. Healthcare and 401k are laughable. I think the 401k was a 1% match. Most company standards are at least 3% and lots have moved to a 4-6% match. The healthcare rates are so bad, I got better coverage through re-runs of ER and Grey's Anatomy. Lots of queen bees and not nearly enough workers or resources. There's a VP/SVP for everything. Even on small teams, you'll find lots of directors, who report to lots of VPs, who report to lots of SVPs, who work for another SVP, and so on. But when you need people to actually do the work, they don't exist. If you're lucky enough to have a decent budget, that helps and can provide help from 3rd parties. That was not my experience. When I asked about additional budget and resources, the answer all too often was, "we don't have budget for that" or "we'll look into that," even though the business expected results immediately. More than once, I presented numbers/goals/KPIs and was told I didn't have the budget to see that goal through, even though the goal is what I was given from the business. Let me repeat that...the business gave me a goal > I gave the business what we need to achieve the goal > the business said I didn't have budget to achieve the goal. So how do you get to the goal? With the only other resource I could control - my own time. This is why you see so many people overworked at Ministry Brands. Every day was like living out an episode of The Twilight Zone. To say I'm glad to no longer be there is an understatement. MB could double my salary and I wouldn't go back. I mean that.
