There’s a feeling that burnout is the fault of the employees instead of the way the company is run. Clients always come first, no matter the costs. You’re expected to give an incredibly high level effort for low pay and menial benefits.
Deadlines are ridiculous and often projects are so underbid just to get the business. Then it is on the employees to make it work with a short timeframe and limited hours. If a project takes longer or if there are mistakes from rushing to meet a deadline, the blame falls on the employee not the lack of planning or support or QA process. In general, the level of work here is very much a chop shop mentality with the client dictating the entirety of the project and how to execute. There is no strategy or creative input from vssl.
There’s little room for growth at this company. Career paths for each department have been “a goal” of management for a little over 2 years now with still little to show. There’s no leadership and if you want any growth or progress you must define your own path.
Issues and problems are not addressed head on. Neither principal is direct when there is a problem. They will listen to you and your issues but then do nothing. The main approach to conflict here is hope really hard that it goes away. This includes bad clients, internal conflicts, and underperforming employees.
Turnover here is astounding and more than any other place I’ve worked. Out of the 18 employees only the principals and 4 employees have been there more than a year. This is not because of growth but due to 12 or so employees quitting in the last year.
There are a few people who don’t have a background in marketing and learn skills for projects on the job. This would be ok if this time weren’t being billed to clients and if there were someone to guide and teach. Unfortunately this is not the case. The bigger issue here is that the agency is too cheap to hire someone that is qualified and instead this subpar work costs clients in the long run.
There are a few people that carry the entire load of the agency and there are others who coast by exclusively working on VSSL content as if it’s a full-time client. The workhorses will get nominal raises but then be expected to do even more work. All hands quarterly meetings will focus on “if we want more good stuff like PTO and beer, we need more billable hours.” It’s never considered that some people are at their breaking point and physically cannot bill anymore hours and that others are doing the bare minimum.
This place never learns from its mistakes and can’t take action. The principals treasure peace over conflict every time to the point where it created a completely toxic environment where the entire group of people who built VSSL left. Problems are ignored until they either blow up or just fester under the surface.
