Method Savvy Reviews

3.4

45% would recommend to a friend

(16 total reviews)
avatar

Jake Finkelstein

71% approve of CEO

36% positive business outlook

Method Savvy has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 16 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Method Savvy 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

16 reviews
3.0
28 Oct 2022

Great People, Weak Structure

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Intelligent coworkers - Great office space - Nice perks (snacks, drinks, etc) - All equipment provided - Good benefits

Cons

- Leadership does not respond well to concerns - Pay is not transparent or equal across functions / outputs - Not making efforts to advance with the changing industry landscape - Do not encourage cross-functional collaboration

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Method Savvy Response
3y
Hi there. Jake Finkelstein, Method Savvy's CEO, here. I wanted to take a moment to respond to this review. I truly believe that all feedback is a gift and while I do not know who shared this (nor do I have any intent of making efforts to find out and I want to emphasize publicly that I do not tolerate retaliation for any feedback - constructive or otherwise) I deeply appreciate this individual sharing their thoughts on what Method Savvy does well and where they feel we can improve. I'll echo the comment that our team is filled with nothing but smart, driven and creative marketing professionals who work hard to delight our clients and invest themselves deeply in teamwork. Our team members are what makes Method Savvy great and I will continue to have our leadership invest in career growth and employee engagement. In terms of the constructive feedback, here's what I'll say. 1. I believe that the entirety of our leadership, myself included, takes any concerns raised seriously and are proactive in addressing them. We have multiple reoccurring venues where issues or discussion topics can be raised - regular one-on-ones with managers, a weekly leadership team meeting, a once per month all-hands meeting where we accepted both anonymous and open questions, a dedicated People Success leader who actively seeks feedback from our team and a annual review process. While I cannot claim to know how every one of our team members feels about how leadership addresses concerns, I do deeply believe that all of us at Method Savvy are good people, that we care about each other and want to help each other succeed. 2. Pay is a hot topic, particularly as of late, and I will be the first to admit that historically we have both succeeded and failed in how we have addressed it. Beginning in late 2021 we began to conduct quarterly compensation benchmarks (vs yearly, which was our historical approach) using a subscription tool called Pay Factors that is updated weekly with thousands of new data points. These compensation benchmarks are shared with every manager and are considered (and often shared) with both newly hired candidates and existing team members. Our decisions on compensation are based on areas of expertise, experience level, geographic location and career advancement opportunity. I have no doubt that we can continue to improve in this area as we always seek to offer pay and benefits that are appropriate for our size of business, competitive in the marketplace and reflective of the talents of all our team members. 3. I'm unclear about the "not making efforts to advance with the changing industry landscape" feedback. What I can share is that as an integrated marketing agency we regularly invest in hiring experts in the discipline areas we feel we need to be successful, including having both interdisciplinary teams dedicated to specific sets of clients as well as a shared service team that has deep expertise. 4. In terms of cross-functional collaboration, I have to admit that find this piece of feedback a little confusing because our teams are structured in pods (what we refer to as meta teams) that are engineered to have team members with interdisciplinary skillsets collaborate together. Each team has (at minimum) a director, creatives, a strategist, an analyst, and a consultant/client advisor. The purpose of this structure is to encourage cross-functional collaboration, not discourage it. 5. I agree with the feedback of "don't overload managers with tasks that can be done by other teammates with some education and guidance" Our goal is to have managers spend no more than 50% of their time in-the-work so they can have 50% of their time to focus on leadership, the team's professional development and people management. In the ebb and flow of client work we do not always succeed at this goal - but with continued investments in hiring experience team members, providing continuing education to our existing employees and building out a robust shared services team we are already committed to creating as much space as possible for leaders to lead and for our team members to grow as professionals. All said, I welcome and encourage all Method Savvy team members to share questions, concerns, and needs with your manager, with our People Success leader, during our all-hands meeting and with myself as often as possible. I and all our leadership have a real desire to help and resolve challenges. Only with your engagement and transparent feedback can we do so. Onward and upward. - Jake
3.0
3 Jan 2021

A Recipe for Burnout

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-Lots of opportunities for young people just starting their careers; junior employees have the space to experiment and contribute to projects while learning the essentials about marketing; -Beautiful, large new office space in downtown Durham near great parks, restaurants, retail -Variety of work makes for never a dull day; Method Savvy welcomes new problems and has a fun process for solving them -If you like the typical fast pace of an agency, Method Savvy truly is a great place to learn and be constantly producing.

Cons

-Poor response to the pandemic: Method Savvy does not reimburse you for any home-office supplies or utilities such as external hardware, internet bills, paper, ink, computer cables, etc. -Mandatory time-tracking with poor capacity management; -Method Savvy will take almost any client: absolutely no industry focus and no vetting for whether or not a client is a "good fit" for the company -For a small team, leadership takes pains to avoid interacting with lower-tier employees -Very low pay for junior & associate-level employees; the company avoids hiring more-expensive/experienced experts so they habitually hire younger people whom they can under-pay. -Team structure is constantly in-flux: the company seems to be in a perpetual "re-org" with a constantly shifting hierarchy/chain-of-command/responsibilities which is odd. -High tolerance for ethical grey-areas

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Method Savvy Response
5y
As the CEO (much less the founder) of a business it is always hard to hear criticism but I truly believe in the power of honest feedback and welcome it. Like all organizations we strive every day to be better than we were yesterday and I consider us blessed to have nothing but smart, talented and driven team members. I know that together we can solve the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities in front of us. To the specifics of this review I'd like to respond to a few comments for clarity. I hope this does not come across in any way as devaluing the perspective that was shared - as it is valuable - but rather to add more context. - Our team has not been under 20 full-time for a number of years. We're currently adding additional headcount in response to our growth needs as well as continue to leverage our extended network of resources and partners that we call The Collective. - All of our employees are offered a flexible work arrangement with no requirement to be in the office at this time. Additionally we provide with computer equipment including monitors and keywords. With that said, I appreciate the feedback regarding additional work-from-home support during COVID (and beyond) and can commit to exploring those options further. - In the last 12 months 36% of our hires have been at a Director level or higher. - Each year we conduct a salary survey and benchmark compensation to experience level and competitiveness. - I'm unsure of what the reference to "high tolerance for ethical grey-areas" is referring to but I can say as CEO that I unequivocally will not tolerate any lack of integrity and strongly encourage any employee, clients or team member to come to me directly if they see anything at all that they feel is questionable. - While it is correct that Method Savvy does not focus on specific industry, we instead focus on working with ambitious leaders who are trying to have billion-person plus impact in the world. Meaning we focus on stage of growth and scale instead of industry. This allows us to use our methodology to best support companies going through transformation rather than using a routine playbook. - Our sales process includes a strong vetting procedure and we ask our teams to regularly provide feedback on the client relationship during the course of the engagement. Quite often we will not explore a working relationship with a brand because we don't believe it is the right fit for our organization or theirs. We also, regrettably, have had to end client relationships where it has become obvious to us there isn't a long-term fit. If any current or future Method Savvy employee reads this please know that I and everyone in leadership want to hear your thoughts on fit and we're open to the discussion at any time. - To the point about shifting org structure and the meta team; I will be the first to admit that we have transformed ourselves extensively over the last few years as we seek to provide maximum autonomy to our teams and put the organization in the best position to continue to grow in a healthy manner. I and our leadership truly believe that by working hard to put smart people in a position to work collaboratively as a high functioning team they can determine how to succeed together and in the service of our customers. Sincerely, Jake Finkelstein CEO Method Savvy
3.0
16 Nov 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Team collaboration You get to work with some pretty smart people Learn as you go Work from home flexibility Free Fridays (work with no meetings or take the day off)

Cons

Leadership is sometimes lacking with direction throughout projects Employee turnover leading to scrambling just to keep projects going Client communication gets siloed at times with PM/Client Advisor Lack of standard operating procedures Workload can get really heavy leading to compromised efforts for delivering really good detailed work for clients instead of okay "let's get by" work 401k match does not start immediately No quarterly performance reviews for employees

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