MBLM Reviews

3.0

44% would recommend to a friend

(29 total reviews)
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Mario Natarelli

66% approve of CEO

49% positive business outlook

MBLM has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 29 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The MBLM employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

29 reviews
1.0
6 Nov 2022

Worst workplace I have ever worked in my career

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1. Few good people (not including managers, partners, or directors)

Cons

1. Lack of diversity. It’s mainly white-male dominant, especially at the manager level. 2. Low salary. MBLM pays you 20–30% lower than the average salary rate. 3. High turnover. Most people leave the company within six months due to the toxic environment. The median tenure on LinkedIn says 8.1 years because they never change partners or managers who have been in the office since they opened the office. 4. Toxic environment. Manipulative managers, racism, sexism, and micromanaging. The partners, managers, or directors never value employees’ work and occasionally criticize them based on their moods. 5. Never paid for overtime. Even though MBLM know it’s illegal, they will make an excuse not to pay you. 6. Too much workload for a small team (under 15-ish people in the office) leads to working overtime frequently. 7. Ridiculous work hours. Occasionally, the day starts around 9 AM but ends around 7 or 8 PM. And it doesn’t include a one-hour lunch break in the eight work hours. (9 to 6 is the work hour, which is 9 hours, but they never pay you for that.) They also ask you to work during the lunch break as well. 8. Poor quality of work. The partner has a specific taste in style, or the directors have particular phrases they like to use over every client, so the works look similar. 9. Poor managing skills. The company has so many useless policies (too many resources meeting) or doesn’t know how to manage time and projects, which leads employees to work inefficiently. 10. Non-hybrid workplace. MBLM asked the employees to be in the office five days per week. I cannot understand why they tell candidates during the interview process that they are hybrid-friendly. They don’t let people work remotely, while partners or managers do that from time to time. 11. Hiring interns only to cut off the budget while not paying them enough. And, of course, they won’t hire them as full-time. 12. Most of the recent reviews were written by managers or partners. Don’t be fooled by them. 13. No work-life balance. The company does not care about your personal life and gets pissed off if you tell them you need to leave the company after work hours or over the weekends. 14. There’s nothing like free lunch (which happens once in two or three months) or benefits for your work anniversary or birthday (basically $50 gift cards for both). Don’t be fooled by work benefits on LinkedIn job posts.

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MBLM Response
3y
While we appreciate MBLM is not for everyone, and people have different perspectives and opinions, this review contains information that is simply untrue. The MBLM NY Office is 54% white and 57% women. We speak 12 different languages and continuously strive to hire underrepresented populations. Most people do not leave MBLM after 6 months. Our average tenure is over 8 years, and includes designers, developers and strategists (not just partners). Salaries are within industry standards and we offer annual bonuses to employees. Our hours are 9-6. This work level is equal to firms in our industry, with longer hours during client deadlines. We do not monitor our employees, and they certainly can (and do) use their lunch hour for themselves. We have won 9 design awards recently, with work judged by marketing professionals. MBLM NY has a hybrid work policy and plenty of employees utilize it, across all levels of the company. We do not hire interns to reduce our budgets, we enjoy the energy, diversity and talent our interns bring and we pay them. We have hired interns on several occasions, with one from Summer 2022 currently working full-time. Several past interns have left reviews so you can see how they describe their experiences at MBLM We don’t think anyone joins for free lunch, but we offer it routinely, as well as breakfast every Tuesday and social events every quarter. MBLM also pays 100% of employee and dependent healthcare. The benefits listed on our website and LinkedIn are accurate. MBLM was founded by someone prominent in the LGBTQ community, and our policies clearly prohibit discrimination based on race, religion or sexual orientation. Much of our pro-bono work has been for groups like AID for AIDS, How to Survive a Plague, and our community volunteers at God’s Love We Deliver. It is especially disturbing that someone would make claims of racism and sexism while never filing any official complaint.
5.0
25 Apr 2016

Great place to work at

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The best thing about MBLM is the great team - our second family (not in a cultish creepy way). Really hard working individuals who often get together for leisure activities like movie nights or snowboarding.

Cons

Having smaller teams often means you work on a lot of different projects at a time. Depending on one's preferences, some might or might not like that.

1.0
2 Feb 2022

Outdated Office Methods

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

• Welcoming on boarding • You will have great friendships • Open opportunity to learn and advanced quickly in your career to take on new, multiple tasks at a time • Included health insurance • A company that focuses highly on diversity, you will meet members from all around the world that speak many languages • Wide range of exciting projects with many components • You will learn at a fast pace, more then you anticipate

Cons

Red flags to catch ahead… • This is a in person office, while there are limited options for flexible remote work there are many babysitting rules and policies to follow and not always granted. Expect to be 100% in office. • Way too small of a team for the multiple amazing projects that require much more hands. Leads the team to total burn out, struggles with output only to perform at lower quality due to time, No mental breaks. • Glued to desk type place, if you live, breathe, work (no family, kids, and single or have 0 personal life) then this is the perfect place. • Below management like many companies you are the bate, fare rules apply to management and above not equal to below. • Work culture advocated by flexing of working late hours, no sleep, eating at the desk or taking time off. • I find this environment to never be encouraged or afraid to talking about anything but work and anxious to be away from their desk long. • Many people still come into this office sick. With a global pandemic going on, that behavior I felt this is lead by micro management the office carries to force in office presence. • Multiple unpleasant off-boarding from past employees due to management behavior. Members left dry or anger from management when witnessed employees followed proper and professional off-boarding rules, bitter unprofessional behavior.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 29 Reviews

Glassdoor has 35 MBLM reviews submitted anonymously by MBLM employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if MBLM is right for you.