Recently saw an exec post an article on LinkedIn that argues that a large percentage of people who quit their jobs during the pandemic “regret their decision” and writes these employees off as “pandemic fueled decisions” rather than necessary career moves to help their overall well-being and mental health. This is very out of touch with what's actually going on at this company. Former employees definitely DON'T regret their decision to leave.
For context, employee retention has always been an issue (even by industry standards), and has recently been exacerbated over the past few years due to leadership’s poor handling of the situation, forcing people to start coming into office around August of 2020. Interns/entry level associates have had to come in 4x per week. However, this isn’t even the reason why the company has such a hard time retaining its employees. It’s just indicative of how out of touch management can be. The amount of pro-office LinkedIn posts they post comically resembles Propaganda from earlier times (think 1920s Eastern Europe).
Here’s what one can expect when coming on board:
- No 401K match (it's been in the works for years at this point - it's not coming)
- Very high turnover (most teams completely churn in 1-1.5 years)
- Company takes on any account they can get and is understaffed - literally any account
- Leads to a disproportionate amount of work to analysts and employees are often overworked as a result,
- Inefficient means of communication between AMs, clients, and account leads results in an overstressed analyst
- Intimidation tactics by management to get employees to work longer hours (was once called out in a very public Slack channel for not answering slack/emails on the weekends)
- By their own admission, upper management is okay with cycling through analysts and burning them out until it's time to hire up again (however recently, upper management is starting to leave pretty consistently as well)
- Overall hypocrisy - company will consistently talk about their commitment to mental health, however, it's quite apparent that employees often leave due to this exact issue (if you’re not going to practice what you preach, don’t brag about it on social media)
- Smoke and mirrors - They like to mask the pitfalls of the company by bragging about meaningless awards like “Crain's Best Places to Work” (every year you will receive around 5-7 emails about filling out this survey - completion rate is how this award is granted to a company)
- Forced to come in multiple times a week. They just opened a brand new office and they are adamant about employees coming in so they can get their money’s worth, when it’s been made very clear by nearly the entire company that they prefer to have the option.
- The Post DA (Direct Agents) Glow Up: Every employee that has quit over the past few years has seen a significant increase in overall happiness and career success. It's uncanny. This could be seen as a Pro.
Acknowledge this review comes off as very strong and harsh - just trying to help future job seekers out by letting them know what they're potentially getting into. Did have some good memories, mainly from my coworkers and friendships gained along the way. The people at the company is what made it possible to stay for so long, everything is just so poorly managed.