Knack Collective Reviews

Everything you read here is true. Sure, reviews are reviews, people come here to vent when impassioned and slighted, they can be biased. However, even with this known truth, what you read here is true, every single word. The promise of a different kind of agency is the biggest untruth of them all. All the founders have done is taken their experience at brutal, cutthroat, grind agencies wrapped it in coral and brass and seeped it in motivational babble and "diversity". (Only a word, not a practice at Knack.) The gaslighting is so intense, even I, who isn't new to this world by any means, questioned my abilities to do a job I know I am good at. The interview process is a disaster, group think slows down everything, problems are thrown back at the leadership team to "solve" when the founders just prefer to look away because they are foundational issues, not ones that can be solved by employees who aren't empowered to make key decisions. Further, the agency espouses they do something different in the marketplace but they're really just a production shop, slashing their prices to make a deal work and promising a scope that is impossible to deliver at the price they approve or one they have the ability to do. In short, it's a hot mess and the founders are, in the end, mean girls. New hires are the flavor of the week, the solution for all agency problems until they're not. When they fail at impossible asks, or worse, quit (even when given professional notice for at-will employment, I might add), employees are canceled and ignored. It's always personal, never business. Ever. You're in until they decide you're out. Just like junior high school.

There has been some effort to discredit the negative reviews here by posting 4 and 5 star reviews, which paint unhappy employees as “bad apples”. Therefore, I will avoid vagueness and just relay my actual lived experience. Here are just a few experiences that I had while working at Knack: As a response to the chronic burnout and rapid fire resignations, the CEO encouraged us in an All-Hands meeting to “prioritize your well-being” and “talk to your manager about taking time off”. A few days later, my request for time off was declined. I was asked if I could “be flexible” because we were “short staffed” (as the mass exodus from Knack had already begun). I was finally allowed to take time off after calling it “a formal request for mental health sick days” in writing. I worked on a multi-million dollar program for a high visibility tech company based locally. The work we produced was worse than garbage. For several months, I received emails from clients with complaints such as, “we have been partners with [TECH COMPANY] for 20+ years, and this is the worst marketing campaign we have ever participated in” and “your company has misled me” and “Does [TECH COMPANY] know about your sketchy marketing tactics? I will be sending a formal complaint to [TECH COMPANY] to make sure they know”. For months, I escalated these legitimate complaints and I was given no guidance from leadership. After several months of 60+ hour weeks and raising my hand several times for help, I broke down and cried in a 1:1 with my manager. My manager said “don’t worry, all the Project Managers have cried to me at least once this week”. This did not make me feel better. 25-30% of Knack’s employees quit or went on extended leave of absence between January-April 2021. When I put in my resignation, one team member encouraged me to “talk about [REDACTED] in your exit interview, and save the rest of us”. I discovered that a white, male peer whom I trained(!!!) made a significant higher salary than I did for working on the same program for the same client. When I escalated this to my manager and HR, my requests for equal pay for equal work were ignored, despite our job titles, workload, quality of work, and responsibilities being equal. Directly after this, I was given a $5,000 bonus, which I thought was weird, since I had asked for a raise (systemic change). I now realize this was part of the cycle of abuse that Knack perpetuates — first, injustice. Next, a spot bonus. But never any meaningful change to policies.