Six Spoke Media Reviews

A major red flag is that the company feels like an early-stage, under-funded startup - even though it is more than 5 years old. The work environment is chaotic and lacks structure, roles and responsibilities are undefined, pay is low, and benefits are underwhelming. Coworkers and HR are sympathetic, but also overworked and powerless due to senior leadership’s (i.e. the CEO’s) tight control and preferences. Leadership is stingy when it comes to giving direction and nurturing your talents, but will generously give criticism if your work product is not perfectly aligned with their expectations. Unless you are on a team that is one of Six Spoke’s core practice areas (i.e. PPC and perhaps Account Management), there is no mentorship or career development. Senior leadership is feedback averse and totally against performance discussions because they are “discouraging” to employees. Um, OK. Six Spoke hires quite a few new grads because they are easy to overwork and the company is priced out of all other brackets. The CEO is a marketer who has perfected the art of the pitch. He will reel you in with inspiring (and empty) jargon like "leadership vacuum," "accelerated career development," "pay for performance," and a vision of "changing the world." He preaches about building an enlightened company full of endless opportunity, but ignores the team’s concerns and ideas for improving the work environment and culture. Thus pay remains low, hours remain long, and there continues to be a mass exodus of top talent in search of companies that will truly value them. Senior leadership is noticeably absent, unavailable, and self-serving. Once you decide to leave and end things on good terms, they will give you the cold shoulder then cut all ties completely. To the people currently at Six Spoke or who are thinking about joining: you deserve better. Leadership has made it clear through its inaction that things will not change and it will not be receptive to the basic needs of its employees.

Hours are ridiculously long, for hardly any pay and terrible benefits. Massively understaffed with high turnover - workload on each individual is unsustainably high. One of their mottos is "learning by drowning" - I think that says it all. Management is overworked and visibly stressed, which leads them to take it out on junior staff. Some managers are also just bad managers/bad at dealing with people. They mostly hire recent college graduates with very little previous work experience so they don't know any better. Few operational staff means critical things often get overlooked - including provision of contracts/legal documents.