Sold a Ferrari, received a Ford. - Membership Development Associate World 50 Group Employee Review

TL;DR: In all honesty, there are so many issues, and I wouldn’t work here unless you’re based in the Atlanta office. The pay is poor, management and communication are awful, and they try to sell you a fantasy about promotions and advancement. Let’s start with pay. This is the main point everyone makes in these reviews. Pay is shockingly low for this role, especially if you’re not based in Atlanta. This is made even worse by the fact that targets are unattainable, and the commission structure is honestly a joke. MDAs are expected to be part of the entire sales process—from research, outreach, booking briefings, providing pre-briefing research, joining meetings (as support for Sales Directors who take the calls, with MDAs acting as transcribers and sometimes speakers), to forming the full sales strategy by liaising with Directors, Managing Directors and Executive Directors up until the point of sale. The role is essentially a 360-degree sales role (minus the actual prospect pitch), but the pay reflects a 180-degree role. Most of the gong credit and compensation go to Sales Directors who may spend only a few days on a deal, while the MDA spends months on it. The effort required is extremely high, while the reward is abysmal. This is compounded by the fact that the role itself is mundane and boring. It’s all just emails, meetings, and dials, whereas during the interview process, we were told there would be opportunities to go to events, help create processes, or meet members. This simply isn’t true. Expectations are also constantly changing—often contradicting each other—and it feels like you’re always on edge waiting for the next process change. This is especially evident in London, where the previous culture of “let’s not reinvent the wheel” shifted overnight to “let’s be the test dummies and pioneers for a better W50.” It felt like being stuck on a merry-go-round, never able to find footing or build a rhythm. This was made worse by managers from other offices sending passive-aggressive emails to me and my manager whenever I failed to remember what felt like the 200th new process change that was suddenly introduced. Part of these expectations includes the sales targets, which—during my three years—were never achieved by anyone on the team, yet they kept increasing annually. In a sales environment, this made it incredibly difficult to stay motivated; it felt like being handed a bike and told to get to the moon. This meant commission was extremely low (the structure of which was already poor), which hurt drive and morale drastically. This was exacerbated by overtime quietly becoming an unspoken rule—“you need to put in the work to hit your target.” So, on top of being severely underpaid, we were now expected to work harder and longer for little to no reward. I spent 12–13 hours working most days for a whole year, yet it earned me no credit with managers, no recognition from the promotions committee, and no meaningful financial gain. My work-life balance was terrible—which was angering given that the WFH policy essentially required you to sit at your home desk from 8:30 to 5:30 with little flexibility that you would expect from WFH. On top of that, managers often offload boring tasks or small-scale opportunities onto their direct reports by framing them as “brand-building opportunities” that will look good on your internal CV for promotion. Yet when promotion time comes, these are conveniently dismissed as insignificant, timelines get pushed, and excuses are made about why you’re “not quite ready.” This happened to me three times, to the point where newer team members genuinely assumed I was two levels higher than I was. Promotions themselves are unstructured and largely meaningless. For MDAs there is almost no communication about what it means to be a Senior, and it’s a guessing game as to who will be promoted and why. The only consistent factor appears to be whether your manager likes you. Beyond the Senior MDA role, there is nothing structured for you to aim for so naturally, your mind turns toward other departments or internal opportunities. However, once you express this interest, you’re essentially written off and coached either to leave or to “wait for opportunities” that never come—or that, when they do surface, are given to someone else because you “lack the experience.” This creates a cliquey culture and fuels nepotism. Speaking of culture: when I first joined, it was great. We had planned socials, quarterly “flings” at interesting venues, internal Summits to experience the product, hackathons to meet and work with other departments, training sessions, and casual after-work drinks or birthday/promotion celebrations that genuinely energized us. With the new CEO, these disappeared overnight to save money. So not only was pay low, but now the culture was gone, with nothing to incentivize team-building or group mentality. This is critical for MDAs, as targets are both individual and team-based—yet without real bonds, there’s no desire to work collaboratively. Managers themselves often aren’t suited to managing a team. It’s well known that top-performing Senior MDAs have the best chance of becoming managers. This means they usually lack real people-management experience or motivation, because to become a top performer you have to be focused almost entirely on yourself. My manager was exactly like this—our conversations were always about my numbers, never about my growth, progression, or strengths. This created a consistently negative tone in our meetings; it felt like I was never doing enough, despite the multiple “extracurricular” projects I took on for the London team, the MDA team, and the wider business. It fostered a culture focused on mistakes and areas for improvement rather than any recognition of what you do well. Generally, communication from managers is bad—very bad. Manager-to-manager and manager-to-team communication is chaotic. It feels like managers across NYC, ATL and LON are competing to implement changes just to prove themselves to their own managers—not surprising given the personality types that tend to get promoted. This leaves us in the dark about essentially everything, and constantly blindsided when changes roll out or when members ask questions we’ve received no information about. This boot-licking attitude is especially pronounced among some of the legacy long-time employees at W50, who often have horrible and rude attitudes toward juniors yet remain untouchable. As an MDA, you’re expected to work with multiple EDs and MDs daily but receive almost no training on how to manage up, and you’re expected to do whatever they say. I had a colleague who was harassed and belittled multiple times by an Executive Director, only to be told, “that’s just how they are,” and encouraged to move on and forget about it. Several EDs are widely known across the MDA team for their abrasive and harsh personalities, and juniors are warned not to “stir the water” with them. HR is aware of instances where they crossed professional lines but inevitably nothing happens because they’ve been with W50 since its early days. While I could share many more examples, I’ll end with the reasoning behind the title. During my time at W50, managers became increasingly confident in selling new starters a dream—promising them culture, progression and opportunities that simply don’t exist. They often reference the career journey of one woman as the blueprint for what you can achieve, but she is literally the only person who has ever had such a progression story. All that said, if you’re considering working here, while some may say it’s a good starter job, there are plenty of other starter jobs that don’t lie or pretend to be better than they are.