Assembly Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

Decent perks such as free food throughout the day at a good quality. Other perks were periodically cut while I was there coz they wanted to prioritise company growth. Nice social vibe. Decent office location. Decent training for juniors.

Cons

When I started, this was a decent place to work. But then they went on a growth spree and the place turned into a corporate hell hole. Perks were cut in order to save money and promote growth. Social aspect of company completely lost. Massages were cut, beers on a Friday were cut. The recreation room was turned into a client meeting room. The office became insanely overcrowded with people crammed basically back to back. Even with the recreation room and conference rooms used as breakout work spaces, there just wasn't enough room. Battery farm springs to mind. Upper management are a joke, arrogant and cliquey. They're only there because they outlasted everyone else, not because they're actually any use. Promotion across the agency is based solely on how chummy you are with management so start sucking up early if you want to get anywhere. Turnover of staff at lower levels is really high. Senior analysts and team leads NEED proper management training. They're not respected by or trusting of anyone they manage. This caused massive rifts within teams and sometimes outward conflict. Culture of blame, finger pointing and gossip. Work life balance became a real issue. The agency over promise in order to win clients and it's the juniors who pay the price in terms of their work hours. Pay too low.

Pros

- Brilliant co-workers who have next-level work ethic. - Get to work with a wide variety of large companies (i.e., great for resume building).

Cons

- Uninvolved upper-management that plays favorites when it comes to promotions. - Grossly underpays and overworks employees until they threaten to quit. - Terrible work-life balance. You are expected to be on-call at all times.

Pros

The NYC office is unlike any other. I have peaked in office spaces. Bar carts, some big clients, cross media work, lots to learn here.

Cons

You will learn a ton here ..simply because they don't hire enough people for teams and you will be taking on the work for 4 people. There's little to no understanding when it comes to work life balance. It will be easy to burnout quick here. Low pay for low level workers. There's no formal training for people management or for new SEM coordinators. Training falls on the person above you who likely wasn't trained on how to manage people. Upper management thinks they are amazing just because they have worked there for a while. If you're in to office politics this is the place for you! How they handled Covid-19 says everything you need to know about the upper management and how little they care about their people. Furloughed a ton of valuable workers, cut pay for everyone and no reversal in sight. Also, interesting how all the five stars reviews happened in the last few weeks from the UK Office - looks like they encouraged their employees to write positive ones to distract from all the bad.

Pros

I truly can not think of one single perk to working here. I would not recommend it to anyone

Cons

I’ve never been at a company so disorganized. Several people left due to this and I know plenty of others are currently looking. Upper management acts like they poop gold and they do not care at all about the team underneath them. I was at this company for almost a year and had not one single review or plan of how to move forward in the company. If you want to be treated like a human and not a cog in a machine please don’t work here.

Pros

-(used to be) the people and team structure, if you had your solid team you were golden and could function as your own machine...when they shifted to a new structure, teams quickly fell apart and team morale/performance started to go down the drain -beautiful office (not a huge pro at the moment obviously) -competitive pay

Cons

-work/life balance isn't great, would easily clock in 50+ hours a week - predominantly due to understaffing and misplaced support -Director-level employees and up are completely out of touch with their own teams -upper management blatantly acts on self-interest, in late 2019 nearly all senior leadership were large-scale given promotions while middle and entry level employees had promotions delayed, empty positions they had to cover for on teams and no bonuses for over 8+months -SEM is the agency's only priority, the entire Display dept. is hemorrhaging talent because teams have gone understaffed and underpaid for over a year -potential for growth outside of SEM is minimal

Pros

exposure to a lot of different industries decent work/life balance depending on role upper management seems more open to listening to employees than I've seen from past companies

Cons

clients can be difficult benefits are mediocre

Pros

In the London office at least- there free breakfast and lunch, with a beer fridge. The company changed the catering company recently, so the quality of food has improved quite a lot. There is a good set of training programmers, so is a good place to start your carrier. Compared with other agencies, the company has invested in technology and the company is driving automating a lot of the jobs. Flexi time is also welcome. The managers (in my team, anyway) are very willing to push people out of the door if they are still working after 5:30] Yoga, Pilates and HIIT classes offered for free.

Cons

Progress in projects is can get tough at times- the office is quite cliquey and it can be hard to have progress in tasks. There is good work happening- the devs managing to bring in new apis. the information is not shared well at the moment. There are people who are the "rockstars" in the company but are somewhat disruptive to work progress and team efficiency. Not much is done by the upper management team about this. Team out in Hong Kong are continually swamped in work, and will message the London team at 11pm in HK time. They don't have the resources to be able to learn how to make their lives easier, and to simplify the process that they have going on Starting salary is not competitive- and the number of promotions is bloated by having graduate joiners having one job title while in probation, and then they get promoted to junior analyst

Pros

Flexible hours, work from home, super clients across diverse verticals. Opportunity to take on all the work you ever wanted to. Exposure to all aspect of digital marketing. Visible to upper management very quickly.

Cons

Sweatshop like environment. Very low support, no on boarding, no training. Too much middle/upper management (aka cooks in the kitchen) High turnover, 10 people left in less than a year. Wait until an account is understaffed, then throw bodies at problem when it's too late. Organizational chart changed twice in a year. Lots of talk & promises to clients with lots but low delivery due to understaffing and unrealistic expectations. All show and no go. You need to kiss up to the right people otherwise your career growth will stop. Lots of talking behind backs, throwing people under the bus. Work day never ends. They talk work/life balance a lot on interview. After a month, reality sets in.

Pros

It was a decent place to learn and grow coming into the industry, but it's trial by fire. The culture as a whole is ok, but it's more like fake optimism than real passion.

Cons

Upper management is filled with nepotism and snakes that are only concerned about getting home at 5pm. You will be expected to work 60+ hours a week and management expects a please and thank you in return. Don't try and go to your team to discuss these problems because cliques form all across the office, and if you're deemed unworthy you basically have no say. So don't expect to progress here either, management seems to go out of their way to hinder you at every turn to get a promotion/raise even if you do good work. No investment in your career whatsoever. You will never feel more like a cog in the machine than you do at ForwardPMX, the child of Forward3D and PMX Agency. ForwardPMX launched in January, so some of these "good" reviews are probably just more fake optimism.

Pros

Fantastic benefits, good opportunity for career progression and an exciting array of clients to work across.

Cons

The structure can be too flat at times, you can end up taking on way too much and not being recognised for your efforts. There's a huge gap between the people at the top and the consultants/team leads and below. I worked there for 3 years and I never had a chance to meet upper management. People tend to get promoted based on how long they've been there, rather than actual career merits or goals achieved. There's an air of unfairness around it all and there's not much flexibility to work across teams. HR are a bit out of touch in regards to why staff are disgruntled. But there are a lot of good things too!