Where to start? This "agency" is an outright catastrophe, thanks 100% to the core exec leadership. How poorly this business is run is astonishing and everyone is miserable all of the time. Let's start with co-owner #1.
-I've never met a more narcissistic leader. Maybe Trump, but I haven't actually met him. Every decision she makes is for a selfish reason and/ or to make herself more money. She feigns caring about her staff, but the second she can turn on them she will, and does, and has.
-Exhibit A: She cut paid maternity leave despite having pregnant staff at the time. (And subsequently cut paid paternity leave too.) Might I add she runs a feminist, female-empowering podcast that’s all about “women helping women.” The podcast is her pet project and she forces her employees to work on it as if it’s a real client. It makes no profit, she's delusional about its success, and it takes precedence over actual, money-earning work way more often than it should. Not only is it based on total lies of women helping women (because she’s proven herself basically the opposite of a feminist) it's also just very bad.
-Exhibit B: She refused to hire the only qualified/ right candidate for a job because they were in a wheelchair and she didn’t want to bring Woo's building up to ADA code or give this employee a handicapped parking spot.
-Exhibit C: All projects are run through her, in which she makes all decisions about creative, which are usually in bad taste or just flat wrong. The poor creative employees have no license here, they are all just pairs of hands. But we should all be grateful for the creative opportunities afforded to us.
Exhibit D: Despite making a ton of money, she goes through the leftover production props and wardrobe and picks what she wants first before any of her underpaid peons can look through the scraps.
-If you disagree with her, you’re no longer on her favorites list. Everyone walks on eggshells around her.
-Unapologetically judgmental.
-The other co-owner adds nothing to the business, brings in awful new business clients that lead nowhere and calls the police when there’s a POC hovering around the office.
-Both owners make employees work on the owners' and owners' families' personal side projects and stay past operating hours to do so.
-There are no benefits, other than the typical health/dental/vision insurance options and some cheap wine and cheese twice a month. No 401k matching, no cell phone reimbursement, no perks, no personal days or summer half days. Because all of these normal perks would cost the company money that they don't technically have to spend in order to operate, so why would they? Employees are worked to the bone without any appreciation, then laid off at the drop of a hat because the business is managed so horribly.
-Refused to give a veteran Veteran's Day off.
-Half the team forced to work on outdated PC laptops that crash constantly.
- Creatives leave with little to no work they're able to put in their books, which makes working here even more not worth the strife.
-C-suite bends over backwards for their awful clients and make the working stiffs bear the brunt of it. They agree to insane timelines and miniscule budgets just to keep their crappy clients happy which forces their employees to work a ton of constant overtime. C-suite is too scared to ever push back on unreasonable demands by clients.
-Employees are expected to be available at all hours of the day and night but be grateful for the peanuts they are paid.
-Bagels on Monday is not culture. A ping pong table is not culture. A $24 Amazon Echo as a Christmas gift is not culture.
-Exec. mgmt/ C suite touts transparency but lies about everything and is as sneaky as can be. Staff is constantly worried about being laid off.
-Employees were told they must take vacation days (or go unpaid) between Xmas and New Years. I've never heard of any agency ever doing this. Jeez, give your team a few days off after they slave away all year and can barely even take a sick day without working. I feel like Woo wouldn't even close for Christmas Day if they could get away with it without full on riots.
-Any positive review for this agency is either from 5 years ago when it was decent or was written under duress.