Macquarium was great, but not after they were acquired by Synoptek - Senior UX Designer Macquarium Employee Review

4.0
2 Apr 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pre-Synoptek: great work/life balance, company culture, smart, creative and supportive team Post-Synoptek: decent pay? theoretically unlimited PTO? (but we know what that means)

Cons

Pre-Synoptek: somewhat siloed working groups, poor communication from management Post-Synoptek: no company culture, only lip service to work/life balance, no support for personal or health challenges, top-down management, typical white male dominant with no regard for justice or diversity

Explore other reviews about Macquarium

5.0
2 Dec 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Ceo is great. Team is great. Office is great. Everything about the company point to it being truly successful. Restaurant on ground floor is tasty too

Cons

I'm used to more structure so that part bothered me. Then again that's just my personality. There is a flat team structure which was interesting for me.

3
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Macquarium Response
8y
Thank you for sharing your experience!
3.0
20 Feb 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

• Its agency work with few guardrails (very autonomous) • Level of creativity is based on you * No pointless meetings * There are only two purposes for meetings: Call with a client or Reviewing/Strategizing your designs (Brainstorms)

Cons

Miscommunication between the PM and the in-house recruiter. Apparently, the recruiter isn't aware of the amount of work that's in their queue. I really liked this job and the people that work there. Very friendly and open to discussion, but it wasn't until the day of, that it was shared with me that I was running low on billable hours designated by the client. And it wasn't until I received this information, did I find out that there were no other projects to work on afterwards. I was told that I had a 3 month contract with them, but it ended after 3 weeks. The PM is a really cool guy, but I would have loved to be warned that the project I was working on, would be the only project I would work on.

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