Pros
Positive: - I got to work with some really great people. The designers, researchers and individual contributors are really great and creative. - The office had a great vibe and they certainly tried to give us good benefits, though they were cutting back when I left. - Most of the clients were interesting, and we were solving problems creatively.
Cons
Negative: - The management seemed aloof at times, out of touch, but when a problem from a client happened, no matter how great your reviews were, heads would role, and quickly, whether the problem was that person's fault or not. Basically, they would through employees under the bus if it would make the client think you were fixing things. No job security as a result. - As an agency, it was hard to do the right thing for the client because the leadership did not want to give straight-talk to the client and back up the UX research team's findings. Often this made the teams feel demoralized. - Management was incredibly negative and created a lot of stress from unnecessarily micro-managing. This often resulted in twice the workload with less results. - Because this is an agency to launch MVPs, you never get to iterate and improve products. - The sales pipeline is poor and sporadic, thus as a result, if they run out of customers, they start letting go of employees, quickly. They have little to no cushion for slow-times of the year. no job security. - Management has a tendency to let go of employees right before their unemployment benefits would kick in. - Salary was way below the average in Austin for the same role. SUMMARY: If you're new to the world and want a hectic job that you'll love working with some of the people, but want to avoid others, then you might want to tolerate Handsome. You get to work on some really cool stuff, but just don't plan on being there more than 6 months, when your unemployment benefits would kick in if they let you go. High-turn over, lots of people leave or get forced out not at all a comment on their skills or ability. They're often simply told, it's not a 'fit' or 'culture-fit'. Yeah, whatever... it's more than that.