Long hours are something normal and expected. It was absolute chaos from the morning I joined until the evening I left. Even the MD has confessed to having what has been self-described as 'desk cries'.
Micromanagement. People are required to update a to-do list with what they worked on in the morning, at lunch and at EOD. You're expected to reply immediately to instant messages, as well as keeping monday.com updated in great detail.
Toxic culture fostered by the middle and senior team members. You get to choose between being sycophant who buys into the senior management's out of touch palaver, or being told you don't fit in with the culture. There's no team, just cliques.
Always hiring due to huge churn rates, yet somehow always understaffed. Existing employees are being made redundant and the new hires come in under a revamped job title. My predecessor had a tenure of about 4 months. My successor about 5 months. For an agency that's been in business 10+ years, hearing the senior management speak about the interview process and how they made hiring decisions was appalling.
You'll be asked to write a detailed handover when you go on AL. When you return from AL you'll find out your line manager did not have the time to ask anyone to help, and you'll have lots to catch up on.
Private conversations with senior management can swing anywhere between 'Í love the way you talk to clients and the way you present your work' to 'you are s**t and your work is s**t'. As such, you can't seriously take any kind of feedback on board. This will be communicated in one of the few mediums where they know the conversation can't be traced.
Management never understood the role paid media plays in the digital marketing mix. They hired and fired numerous employees, and repeatedly set the wrong expectations for clients.
