Pros
- The people (if you're lucky) made work a lot more tolerable and were genuinely awesome. They are perhaps the only redeeming quality about this place. - You will pick up useful skills, which will benefit your career when you move into your next job. It wouldn't be because someone taught you though, because the truth is that there is barely any guidance or feedback and bosses are so hands-off. It will be because things get thrown at you all the time so you'll learn to manage clients independently. You'll learn to own your work, meet client expectations, lead meetings on your own, present confidently at numerous new business pitches (which you can be asked to attend and present at short notice even if you weren't involved in the entire process and have zero knowledge about the company.) The above also applies to executives with 0 to 2 years' of experience... but hey, I guess it's not a bad life skill when you decide to move on from this company, which you should. - You get to work with and befriend many people from different countries and backgrounds on a daily basis, which is pretty fun.
Cons
- Management has no knowledge of PR and no relevant working experience in Singapore. If you look at the company's website, it's easy to realise that this company, although headquartered in Singapore, is full of employees of a certain race. The same applies to clients. So expect them to stick up for each other. Good luck if you're not the same race - it's you vs them. (Also the company used to have profiles of every single employee on its website. But I guess people have been quitting so regularly, they gave up updating it and just decided to remove everyone's profiles LOL.) - Putting the race issues aside, the lack of local experience also means that senior management does not have any local media relationships or understanding of how the media landscape works. This also means they like to commit to unrealistic targets (because they have no idea what works or what doesn't) when they speak to clients and then expect the manager or exec to deliver. Honestly, this is the first job I've had where I felt that my boss knew less about clients and their industries than me and that is truly shocking. - A lack of clear strategy and direction. The company pitches for and accepts every client, regardless of the team's interest, experience or skill sets. There is no clear specialisation between teams - it's a free for all with every team going after every client and competing with each other. It does not matter if the client has a miniscule budget or if the client's project has zero news value or feasibility. Pitch anyway. Spend countless hours making a 100 slide presentation deck even if the client is wasting your time. Repeat this several times a week. - The company is so focused on growth and enhancing its reputation in the industry that it does not care about its employees. At REDHILL, you are just a cog in the machine. As many as five people can be hired in a week, and some of these people can leave a month later. It doesn't matter to management though. They just need someone to do the grunt work. Forget about proper training or building a proper team culture. In fact, when it comes to team culture, the only culture is highly focused on drinking (which is great if you like to drink I guess), but pathetic if you don't because people can act really unprofessionally when drunk, even senior management. Close to 10 employees have left the same team in two months... so you can decide what you think about this. - There are clearly incompetent people and a lot of disorganisation in the way the company is structured. Someone who doesn't speak the local language and has never worked in the local market throughout their entire careers can lead an entire team in Indonesia and Thailand, while working remotely from Singapore and India. This results in a clear disconnect between local market realities and often it is the local teams in the respective markets who struggle to translate the bosses' unrealistic promises to clients into fruition (because it's just not realistic). It is the norm that someone with zero local experience is roped to work on a client in a market they are completely unfamiliar with, just because there is a shortage of manpower. If all else fails, we outsource the job to India and Sri Lanka - you know, to cut costs. - Cut throat competition between teams and a nonexistent corporate culture. Due to Covid restrictions and the previous small office, I have never been able to meet and am unfamiliar with two-thirds of the people working in the Singapore office. The reason being that the teams compete and don't communicate and there are no opportunities to interact with each other. The other reason though is that people join and leave the company so quickly... so why even bother getting to know someone you don't work with? - The constant pursuit of growth at all costs and perpetually chasing for new business despite a clear manpower shortage eventually translates into a lack of work-life balance and low morale amongst employees. Are we even surprised? - A lack of resources and company benefits. New joiners are given barely functional laptops and usually have to use their own. There is a company policy of unlimited leave but in reality, it is difficult to utilise leaves and employees are often pressured by management to reduce the number of leave days they take. - Gossip and a toxic working environment. The management practises favouritism and will favour certain employees they have close personal relationships with, even if numerous people have shared objective feedback that said employee is not good at their job. Same goes with HR. Don't bother sharing objective feedback since it doesn't matter a difference. This toxic culture also means that people tend to take things personally and act out especially when drunk, so objective comments on how someone could improve in their work might be seen as gossiping and personal attacks. Yikes. - There is no transparency in the pay between employees and teams, so someone with the same experience and designation can be paid significantly lesser than another employee. It's disgusting.