Pros
There are no pros whatsoever, even if I forced myself to think.
Cons
1. Let’s start with something that affects everyone equally: the delayed salary. I am not exaggerating when I say that you will never get your salary on time. A 1-1.5-month delay is very normal here. That is because the company has been running on losses since March 2023. You will end up sending them email after email, but you’ll only receive no response, or at best, emotional fluff in return. 2. Lack of transparency. If you are a content writer/editor here, you will face random deductions from your salary; and it gets worse, because every time, they’ll cite “quality issues” as the reason for said deductions. You’ll receive sub-par feedback for your work - nothing that’s going to help you work better and get rid of those deductions. No. 3. Empathy is weaponised here. True empathy requires an actual understanding of your employees’ circumstances and struggles in the context of the workplace. However, the empathy on display here comes in the form of heart emojis, superficial messages of motivation (for you to overwork), monthly “chill” events that are invasive, awkward, and just generally uncomfortable. You’ll be gaslighted to think you’re being ungrateful and indecent to speak for your own well-being because the executives will bomb you with their superficial praises for the overwork that you do while not once acknowledging that you are overworking and should relax. 4. There is no scope for growth. The max you can upgrade to from working in any given department is up to managing that department, a.k.a. becoming a manager. That’s as far as your promotion here is going to be. And many of the times, it won’t reflect your potential, but more of their abrupt need to fill someone else’s shoes (because they can’t retain their employees). That being said, if you are an attractive female, you can count on the Managing Director to promote you, not just once, but twice, thrice in a span of 1.5 years, even to the position of a COO, depending on how attracted he is to you and how well you can seduce him. [more on that later] 5. Toxic employees. Only a few people here know professionalism. The majority displays no semblance of mutual respect for their colleagues and will make sure to let you know that they dislike you/your actions by being passive-aggressive. Yes, the tonality of interpersonal communication here is passive-aggressive, especially for those who work remotely. The culture of the office workspace in Bangalore is on another level of toxic – the things that happen there are unimaginably vile, and out of civility, I shall not detail those in this review. 6. Neurotic CEOs – even though this is an intimate issue, I believe it deserves a mention because said intimate issues don’t stay intimate and cloud the CEOs’ judgement to function as unbiased professionals. What I mean by this is that the “Executive Team” at WrittenlyHub is ego-driven. To begin with, the CEO is a narcissistic pick-me. She leads with however she is feeling at the moment – not empathy or professional ethics. Her bad mood, threat to her authority, her being zoned out and inattentive can all potentially result in YOUR termination. All this while she puts on a façade of being kind on LinkedIn and company events. On the other hand, the Managing Director, who is also a part of the problem, is extremely preoccupied with his female employees. So much so that no promising young woman at the office is spared from his unsolicited inappropriate humour and touches. Yes, you read that right. In 2023, he was also accused of SA by two female employees (a writer and an editor) who worked there. 7. Organisational inefficiency. The work processes here are haphazard. Every two months, the team will come up with a new band aid fix to their operational problems and expect everyone working there to miraculously keep up. I say band aid solutions because that’s what they are – poorly-planned and fleeting. What is even sinister is that in their 4+ years of functioning, they have still not been able to minimise ambiguities and create a workflow that protects their employees from overworking and getting burnt out. Be it a content writer or editor or an operations team member, you’ll always be on your toes (in the worst of ways) because there’s SO much ambiguity on any average workday here. 8. The HR department in this nought agency is just there for the namesake. In simple words, this department is a henchman of the neurotic executives whom I’ve described above. So, you can imagine how cooperative and helpful they can possibly be when you are faced with a difficult situation within the company, i.e., not at all. There is no scope of grievance redressal, filing an internal complaint, requesting an internal investigation against anyone. If you suspect your manager is problematic, please pack your bags and leave because (God forbid) if you bring it up, you can and will be fired. Loyalty to authority is valued here more than the type of work you do, or the how good of a professional you are. 9. Finally, after you leave the company, good luck getting your final salary settled. They save the worst for the last. Thank you for your time in reading this. I hope I was able to bring you clarity.