GS&F Reviews

There are so many cons. This was my second job out of college, and I was so excited to learn from talented people at a large advertising agency. I was mistaken. First off, the cliques are absurd, especially in the PR department. The higher up girls treat the coordinators like work horses who do the work that they aren’t interested in. They go for drinks at lunch, gossip throughout the day, and outwardly bully. I had multiple conversations with management about this behavior, but was repeatedly shut down. They will consistently reward the bullies, and make you feel voiceless. I luckily had never experienced bullying in my life, that is until I started working at GS&F. It is so backwards. Another con is there is no room for growth, and no plans for it either. If the bullies like you, you will get promoted, if not, then get out now. There is also no regard for workloads. There were so many days where I’d get to the office early, just to be anxiety ridden all day because there was no way I’d be able to get my work done in the regular work day. I’d consistently end up staying two hours past 5 p.m. and then have to work into the night once I got home. If I’d bring this up to my managers, they’d make it seem like I was complaining and not working hard enough. On a good day, my boss would offer to help with the workload, only to tell me she didn’t have enough time once I asked. Then she’d leave to go to the local Mexican restaurant in the building to drink with her clique from work. All I can say is, RUN. No job is worth your sanity. I can not say worse things about GS&F.

If you’re like me, you usually look at the 1 star reviews and think, “Clearly this person was scorned and maybe I should take this with a grain of salt.” Not here. Take a look at the amount of 1 star reviews and soak it in. As someone stated before me, not a single one is false or misleading. If you do hear someone singing the praises of this place they either haven’t been here long enough, have a cush leadership position, or drank the cult kool aid. Employees are afraid to express their true feelings. Let’s start here: in my 6 years employed here they’ve had two mass layoffs. No notice. Some people worked there for years and all of a sudden couldn’t pay their rent/mortgage. One of these mass layoffs was before the pandemic even really started. It was March/April of 2020. Former CEO beamed with confidence as he told us they had made the decision to lay those people off a couple months prior for the health of the company and STILL chose not to give them a heads up. THAT’S how they treat their “friends”. They are terrible at projecting business and budgets. They’ll say that has nothing to do with anything but don’t offer another valid excuse for laying off so much of their staff. They also don’t have enough of a diverse client portfolio to save them from economic disaster. Of course if there’s a pandemic people don’t need to advertise tires or water heaters… you know… necessities. They don’t have this kind of common sense, and I honestly shouldn’t help them out by telling them here. The clients are terrible. If you want to work on a pyramid scheme, tires, water heaters, or an extremely religious, trump-loving pizza company, you’ll love it here. The pyramid scheme client is the most toxic, disrespectful and abusive client I have ever had the displeasure of working on. We would bust our butts for them working overtime for months on end only for them to tell us they were “embarrassed” by the work we worked so hard to produce. It was the best work we’d ever made for them (and got the best engagement) and they insulted us to our faces and the executive team just stood there and took it. Then would turn around and let us kill ourselves to re-produce work for them again on the same timeline. Everyone on that team is miserable. Leadership is overly optimistic and happy about it. It’s toxic. Management has said over and over again working conditions will change but they don’t. That account is on their 3rd team in only a year. GS&F keeps getting a fat paycheck though, so they’re happy. The clients just keep getting worse, too. They keep pitching and never win. Never win anything good that you’d actually want to work on anyway. But you’ll work late and over the weekend on the pitch for it. The newly named CEO was referred to as a “visionary” but only talks about the awards he won in ~1999. He’s a bully. He’ll insult and disrespect you to for face and laugh like it’s a joke. And you just have to laugh back because you don’t know what to do. Make one comment that he doesn’t like and he will hang onto it for your entire career here. He does not, nor does anyone else in leadership, know how to attract the millennial or gen z markets or anything about social media. So, if you’re a client or prospective employee looking for expertise, look elsewhere. Additionally the CEO pretends to be sympathetic to his employees and really care, but I have never seen someone master the art of crocodile tears better than he. It takes him entirely too long to admit his mistakes. He’ll wait until an entire department quits before he will admit he made a mistake about something. And then he probably still won’t admit it. Remember when they moved UX upstairs and they dropped like flies? They still haven’t recovered from that and that was years ago now. The UX department is virtually nonexistent, something that should be a priority in a digital first world. He also told me to my face months ago that getting rid of project managers years ago was a mistake, but he still has no plan to remedy the disaster he’s created. It’s literal chaos. You will have to wear the hat of project manager along with everything else you’re doing and it’s impossible to have visibility of what’s coming down the pike. Workloads are unmanageable. Timelines keep getting shortened. You’ll have 2-4 days to turn most things around. Entire campaigns even. Yet if you suggest even a project management software instead of a human and they’ll say, “but who’s going to do that?” There’s no helping them. They don’t want to improve, but they’ll happily add on more useless performance management software no one wants, needs, or asked for. Let’s not forget that one time someone complained about pay I guess? And they signed us all up for some online Dave Ramsey program. There were some gems of human beings employed there but it’s an overwhelmingly toxic workplace all around. Most of the good people have quit, been let go, or are about to quit. The comments about frat culture couldn’t be more accurate. I have been silenced by male coworkers in brainstorms and meetings many many many times. Go to your boss or HR about someone being sexist or misogynistic or even sexually assaulting you and they’ll do nothing. This is the kind of culture you’ll be around here. HR does not have the appropriate training or experience. He is a mouthpiece for senior leadership. He would probably respond to this review with some clinical, trite response —but let me stop you—saying if I was unhappy, I could have said something. Believe me, I did. Many times over the years. I was constantly labeled as a trouble-maker and difficult to work with, despite being a passionate top-performer. He’d also say they didn’t want me to quit, yet did absolutely nothing to keep me. Oh, I should mention there was one Glassdoor review that GS&F acted on. That was the comment someone made about the lack of diversity. They quickly tried to remedy that with low level new hires and made sure to get those individuals’ photos up on the website ASAP so they could collect their diversity points. Then as soon as the pandemic hit, most of those people were let go. It’s because they don’t respect anyone other than a white man or a submissive or overly positive white woman. Basically if you’re not a white former-frat-boy or a cheerleader, don’t work here. They won’t respect you. They’ll use you as a diversity point and disrespect the opinion you bring to the table. Furthermore, they created a Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee a few years ago now and have done very little to stick to their original plan. In fact, they’ve just hired a new wave of white people in leadership positions. So, they recently had a presentation to remind us of all the work they’re doing on diversity… since it’s not at all visible. They do LOVE to claim that the agency is “neuro-diverse” but they do nothing to support those diversities either. It’s just a cop-out so HR doesn’t have to do his job and actually recruit diverse talent. He just loves to complain about how “difficult” it is. They claim to pay well and have good benefits. But the “good life” policy, as others have said, is just a way to market their standard benefits package. It’s nothing special at all. You’ll have a high deductible health plan and you won’t ever reach the $4k for individuals unless you have surgery or something extreme. The pay is below average as well. I constantly had to fight for what I was worth and HR would be sure to disrespectfully remind me to not expect that kind of raise the next time. Despite the fact that my boss constantly gave me top marks for accountability and told me I was the most billable person in the department. There were literal statistics backing it up and they still under-appreciated me and treated me like I was disposable. I easily got another job making significantly more at a smaller place. Overall, GS&F has an entirely over-inflated view of themselves without the accolades or ability to back it up. They are floundering. They’re already way behind and just TALKING about catching up. It won’t happen. Their egos are too big to learn from the younger generation, someone different from them, or someone smarter than them. They’re too pretentious and stuck in their old ways. Don’t work here. Don’t bring your business here. Just don’t. Go work with professionals.