Firm Media Reviews

The CEO initially took a hands-off approach, but in the last year became more involved and began making changes that negatively impacted morale and hurt overall company performance. His frequent and often passive-aggressive rants during team meetings created a tense work environment. Real skills and ability were often overlooked in favor of those who were more willing to "kiss up" to leadership and outwardly show how stressed they were. The CEO appreciates when people "lose sleep at night" over their jobs. I was efficient, organized, and did my job well but apparently wasn't enthusiastic or stressed enough. An increase in micromanagement and frequent changes for the sake of change created a confusing and unproductive work environment. Time tracking all of your tasks became mandatory for everyone except upper management and the sales team. The sales team consistently struggled to close deals and blamed external factors rather than taking responsibility for their own performance. I've now learned than many competitors in the industry do not have this same issue and don't default to blaming the election. The departure of several key employees who helped maintain the positive company culture, significantly impacted the company's morale and overall success. The company is currently experiencing financial difficulties, which ultimately led to layoffs including myself. There is definitely a lack of stability and the future of Firm Media is foggy.

Where do I start? First of all, the CEO has changed. LinkedIn has made that readily apparent over the last few weeks, despite not having interacted with FM in years. All these bad reviews calling out the CEO recently are referring to their current CSO, Chris - not Nathan. I don't know Nathan, so none of these refers to him. Did you know that, as CEO, Chris clipped his nails in his office, with the door open? It was WEIRD. Not only is that not a normal thing to do in the workplace, but also seemed like some sort of weird power play. I don't know, but made me uncomfortably (especially when the general consensus among the veterans was that "we just had to deal with it"). That aside, the pay was minimal and the workload absurb. It was bad years ago, so I can only imagine what it's like now. Despite the promises that came with every title change, you were left on your own to figure everything out and micromanaged to an extreme degree. I will never miss having to list out all my tasks/responsibilities from the day's work on BaseCamp - it was pointless. For newer employees, all this meant you risk burn-out early on. Should you say anything about needing help or assistance, somehow you became enemy #1 (my favorite was when Chris would take over the Monday morning meetings and make you out to be some kind of "example" in front of everyone without personally naming you). That, too, is not a normal occurence in the workplace. In fact, most would label that as "toxic." For those who have stuck around all these years, there are better jobs are out that pay for your worth and don't stretch you beyond human capacity. If you're still being given the ol' "over bandwidth" motivational falsehoods, it's really time to move on. All of that said, I'm so glad I left when I did. The grass really is greener on the other side.