The following is strictly regarding the Berwyn (formerly King of Prussia) office. While my interactions with the team in Michigan were limited, those interactions were outright positive, so they should be considered exempt from the following, based on my experience: • No 401k contribution or match. • Less than adequate base salary and bonus structure. • Severe lack of client diversity, which not only means heavy dependence on one client who could drop Psyma without a second thought, but also leads to constant communication issues. • Complete absence of any employee development and growth program anymore. There used to be at least a loose but helpful development structure in place, but even that has gone away. • Lack of direction, throwing plenty at the wall and expecting the staff to adjust, ridiculing anyone who can’t keep up. • Lack of research integrity, especially in quantitative work in my experience. Base sizes and confidence intervals are hardly considered since the rules of mathematics are reportedly different in market research. • Over the past year, projects timelines got shorter, were sold cheaper, and objectives changed on a dime. In this industry, those kinds of project happen every now and then, but it became the norm. Bending over backwards for clients, cutting corners to accommodate demands, throwing out work because the client changed their mind (or never made it up), all recipe for burnout but any raised concerns were met with “it’s the industry” and demands for positive attitudes. Much, if not all, of the above can be linked back to the completely out-of-touch upper management. Unrealistic workloads and lack of accountability. If you raise an issue (constructively), you get treated like wallpaper. They expect a pizza party to make everyone happy again and get upset when that doesn’t work. I could go on.
