At Amplience I was constantly being told how good the culture was, and I genuinely believe that it probably used to be. But in all honesty my experience is that it’s a business with very little interest in the people working there. I was only with them slightly over a year and there were at least four rounds of redundancies, the last one being a biggie that wiped out me and a couple of dozen others.
There was a lot of talk from the leadership about ‘getting back’ to the positive culture they supposedly used to pride themselves on, but no meaningful action at a structural or individual (or even human) level.
They’d booted out so many excellent people, and the great ones that are still there are now, understandably, feel very uncertain of how this is all going to pan out. The manner in which all these redundancies got made was no better than a conveyor belt, and again the desperate absence of any shred of emotional intelligence caused a lot of unnecessary worry and pain.
The word ‘deluded’ probably seems harsh, but it honestly feels the most appropriate, certainly based on how they routinely treat their people and what they expect from them in return (the phrase ‘dig deep’ was laughably overused, and would usually come before and/or after another culling).
The upside is I met and worked with some awesome people, but 90% of them got hoofed out the same day as me. Who knows if they’ll even ever recruit again, but my honest advice would be to steer well clear. They may talk a good game but the substance, and definitely the security, is paper thin.
P.s. And if you’re considering joining in a creative role then all I’ll say is that I’ve never worked in a business with less interest in, or regard for, creativity. They canned 80% of the creative team in one panicky sweep, so I wouldn’t have high hopes that you’d have a happy creative career there.
