Save Yourself and Don't Work Here (Specifically this Role) - Digital Media Strategist Nexstar Media Group Employee Review

Work/life balance - I found it very difficult to relax after work due to stress from the day to day activities. This came in waves throughout my employment (over 2 years); however, I had a meeting with my manager several months prior to the end of my tenure where I expressed how I was burnt out from the workload I was being tasked with. In that meeting, I was told to "manage my manager." This was extremely off-putting as my role was not a management level position. The burnout never resolved even after numerous attempts to adjust my approach to the role to make it more bearable. Workload - You will be the only non-management employee on the Strategy team with a direct supervisor and a manager. I handled roughly 80% of new opportunities and 65% of active accounts during my employment. Active account work does not stop when new opportunities come in and there is a ton of overlap, especially when you're on more high-touch accounts. The expectation is that all pre-sales is your responsibility and since you're the only Strategist on the team, there is no one to help and no one to delegate items to in times of high stress. This is where being self-aware as a manager and recognizing your employee's stress levels comes into play and would extremely beneficial. Unless you speak up and are direct with management, they will be blissfully ignorant and let you drown. Poor management - This went through waves as well throughout my employment. When we were slow, things were healthy. When we started to pick up is when things got rocky. My direct supervisor lacked various management skills, including being self-aware of the workload on an employee's plate at one given time. There were numerous times where I would list off 5+ accounts that had tasks and it seemed that my direct supervisor was working on one item that day. A direct supervisor should realize the imbalance of work and check-in to see where they could step in and help. Micromanaging - EVERYTHING you do will be heavily scrutinized EVERY DAY. This is something that started day 1 and I was told this level of detail is why our team is so buttoned up compared to other teams. At first, this was helpful in determining how we should approach certain situations. I would utilize past work to approach a similar situation and would be told I was wrong. In the end, my answer was never going to be right and my direct supervisor was not able to effectively communicate what she was looking for without getting upset when I would have a different opinion/perspective. Sometimes she would even go in and change my work if I wasn't fast enough at addressing her comments on the shared document. You will also have daily internal meetings with your managers to discuss where you are with tasks. This is in addition to the several meetings you will experience in one given day. There were some days where I would have 7+ meetings and have a full list of tasks that needed completed. I would have to work after hours to accommodate these meetings and still meet my task goal. You will have internal strategy proposal reviews where you will present all the work you've done on your 30+ slide deck to your managers and they will go slide by slide and tell you what needs changed. The lack of autonomy in this role is discouraging and is what led to me ultimately leaving the company. PTO - Vacation time is ACCRUED. It will show you have a full 2 weeks of vacation pay upfront; however, if you utilize all of your vacation pay before the end of the year, you will owe that back. I learned this the hard way since it was never explained to me. Post-employment, I was told you accrue a little over 3 hours of vacation time per paycheck, but this will not be documented on your paycheck. On your first paycheck of the year, you will see a lump sum of 80 hours vacation, 80 hours sick, and 16 hours personal. Over 60% of my last paycheck was garnished due to this. Merit Increases - During my performance evaluations, I was told that I was performing well and a strong asset to the team. Then when we would receive our merit increases, I would receive a 2% increase. This happened both years. This seems to be the minimum standard this company is willing to provide, regardless of the quantity and quality of your work. My recommendation would be to fulfill your job description duties, but nothing more as you won't be rewarded for your efforts. Compensation - For new opportunities, you will prepare a proposal that will include a media recommendation and be required to pitch these proposals to clients, as stated in the job description. In Workday, you are technically coded as part of the sales team; however, when you pitch these proposals and if the client decides to sign with Nexstar to run their advertising campaigns, you will not receive any commission off this sale. Only the sales teams at the stations receive this commission even though you will do a large majority of the work in terms of the recommendation and pitch. The sales teams lean heavily on you and are typically uncomfortable pitching these recommendations and have you pitch the entire 30+ slide deck to the client with no reward.