Now, the not-so-fun stuff:
There is no real concept of career development at TFA. The company leans heavily on junior staff without offering any formal training or mentorship. Instead, there is an over-reliance on use of AI which just creates lazy workers and poor quality work. You’ll receive the legal minimum for everything at TFA - including holiday allowance, bereavement leave (none) and pay. Wages are low, often just above minimum wage, and on one occasion, the CEO even said “everyone here is underpaid, anyone could walk out and find a better job” - way to make your staff feel valued! Basic entitlements like pension contributions and statutory sick pay are listed as ‘benefits’, but they’re simply legal requirements.
Pay is also inconsistent, with people in the same roles, at the same level, and with the same experience being paid differently. The contract even included a clause stating that we weren’t allowed to discuss salaries with each other (which is illegal under the Equality Act 2010) and honestly, it just felt shady. There should be a clear and consistent pay structure in place so that progression feels fair and transparent. Instead, it created a culture where people were constantly asking for raises, and whether or not they got one depended on how the business was doing that week. It was unpredictable, unfair, and led to workers feeling frustrated and/ or undervalued.
Top performers in the team were routinely dragged down by a culture of blatant misconduct - known to senior leadership. Despite repeated issues, no meaningful action was taken, which allowed the behaviour to continue unchecked for months. There were ongoing issues with misuse of company time and resources for personal projects, which left others carrying the workload. Rather than addressing this, the director chose to effectively ignore it, creating a toxic environment where others felt demotivated. After all, why bother putting in the effort when someone else could blatantly slack off without consequences? Not only this, those engaging in unprofessional behaviour were not only unaccountable but were often rewarded with opportunities above highly contributing colleagues, such as off-site client shoots and high profile projects.
The absence of a HR department only worsens the situation. Almost all employee concerns are handled directly by the CEO, which would be fine if said CEO understood objectivity or professionalism. In reality, everything is taken personally. Feedback isn’t welcomed - it’s seen as an attack - and as a result, issues fester instead of being addressed. Or, worse, rash decisions are made out of spite, that end up shooting himself in the foot out of sheer pride or ego. The overall culture is reactive, emotionally driven, and completely lacking in reflection.
On multiple occasions, the CEO would storm out of the office after losing his temper, leaving the team to rearrange meetings and tiptoe around his absence - no explanation, no thanks, and certainly no apology. Everyone has off days, and the team might have had empathy and respect for him as a leader if he had just taken a 30-minute breather to grab a coffee and returned with a fresh mindset, or simply taken any accountability. Instead, it was brushed under the rug as though nothing had happened - something that, rightly so, would never have been acceptable from anyone else on the team.
Strategically, the company runs on vibes. There are no monthly or annual targets, and no structured planning. Decisions are made on the fly based on flawed comparisons like "we’re down from last month," without any broader context. This has led to knee-jerk moves like redundancies - only for the company to hire again for the exact same roles shortly after. Equally, clients were far too often overpromised and undersold.
The team was constantly understaffed, leading to some client projects being many months behind schedule. This put a constant strain on the creative and web teams in particular, when someone was ill/ on holiday it was therefore a way bigger than it should be in a well resourced company. Just as we’d start to catch up, a new client would be thrown our way because the CEO refused to ever say no. The focus was always on bringing in revenue, never on assessing whether we had the capacity to deliver. In multiple instances this led to quantity over quality as there simply was not enough time for every client to get attention when resources were so stretched.
New clients would be brought in during the final days of the month, and in a scramble to secure that month’s payment, work would be rushed, often without a proper brief. This resulted in poor-quality output and high levels of stress across the team. Staff were often working from as early as 7am and staying past 6pm just to keep up (our hours were 9-5), and to be clear, none of this overtime was paid and rarely acknowledged by the director.
In the same breath, there was always an abstract new passion project on the horizon - a ‘women’s only’ competition website, ‘edgy’ card game and children’s app. We didn’t even have the capacity to deliver for our existing clients, so the idea that we could take on these extra ventures felt completely disconnected from reality.
Unfortunately, all of these factors combine to create an unhappy, unmotivated team who spend their lunch breaks on Indeed. Turnover is also sky-high. During my time there, at least one person left every single month (that's a 50% turnover in 1 year, safe to say team morale was abysmal). Exit interviews were either a formality or skipped altogether, and leadership seemed completely unbothered by the pattern of staff leaving for similar reasons time and time again.
You literally can’t make this stuff up. If past patterns hold, this review will be met with the usual deflection - probably blamed on my ‘attitude’ or ‘personal vendetta’ instead of acknowledging the consistent issues raised by multiple people. Every single review left by an employee on this platform is negative so there’s a common denominator here…
