Pros
Fresh and eager, right out of design school, this job was an absolute dream come true for me. I was thrown into a fast pace, collaborative, energetic environment. The designers I worked with were so talented and eager to help me learn, grow, and I attribute most of my knowledge and skills to them. Rule29 is an amazing place for a designer right out of school to go and learn and thrive for about 2–3 years. After that, they need more, and a place that treats them better. The creative work is high quality and something I have always been SO proud of! The solutions and work we do are authentic and high level. The portfolio you build here is impressive, and you will have no trouble advancing your future career.
Cons
There is a huge lack of motivation to grow, especially when there is no incentive and you aren’t rewarded for the positive growth you are showcasing. Promotions usually have to be asked/argued for, simply because they do not want to pay you more and would rather replace you with a completely new hire. Management is poorly run. Leadership is absolutely blind to the consequences of a family-run business. There is no accountability with decisions, finance, operations, because multiple people are related. Despite countless feedback (over many years) of management’s toxicity, nothing changes. Employees are told to “just be transparent” and come to them with issues (which leads to being poorly mistreated by operations and anyone related to the family business), but management refuses to hire on HR to remedy ongoing problems within the company. Calling a business “family” is an obvious red flag. It blurs the lines between work & life, leads to frequent guilt-based manipulation, insinuates unrealistic expectations, and promotes an unhealthy, toxic work environment. As a designer, you are micromanaged and not trusted. Every minute is tracked, and you are told to update operations daily with information that they already have. As a result, time is wasted, often with solutions that management implement without enough context to compensate for others not doing their jobs. Management is insecure in their own decision making. They often inundate employees with surveys of C-suite-level-decisions, while never hearing or acting on the quality feedback.
