Pros
The mid to low level staff is filled (or was before they all left) with incredible people who are there to help you grow. Friendships were easy to come by as everyone was very kind, fun and great PR people. The company holidays and random lunches were a nice perk before the pandemic. Because the teams are so small, you were able to start from Day 1 and dive into higher level work. This was only exacerbated by the pandemic when teams shrunk to life support level of bandwidth, they were held together by the friendships and the opportunity to do work not at your level.
Cons
Even before the pandemic happened, there were problems. Team morale was low and work never stopped being piled on top even though the teams didn’t grow. Bandwidth problems were never solved and employees were told to do 100 percent of the work for 50 percent of the pay. When confronted with team/agency wide problems, management did not take them seriously until it blew up in spite of an “open door” or “raise a flag” mentality that was preached by management. Current/former employees were mocked and talked about in a bad light in the middle of the office or on team calls. There is a us vs. them mentality with management that comes to light the moment you step up of lock step with the team. Once you’re in the dog house, even if it isn’t through your own fault, there is no coming back from it and you’ll be in there till the day you leave. The agency had so much potential but it got in its own way not treating employees with respect, having zero transparency and zero professionalism when employees made career decisions to leave. Normally, these would be an opportunity for PR agencies to maybe add a client depending on where the former employee went but these bridges were burned entirely by the conduct of management.