Friendemic Reviews

*Disclaimer* I wanted to wait a few months to write this review because the grass isn't always greener. Simply put, I think the grass is greener. The Quick & Dirty: Friendemic is great if you want something easy and/or a resume builder right out of college. The actual skills and tasks that you have to complete are very simple and repetitive. The reason it may seem stressful is due to a serious lack of organization, automation, and leadership. You'll spend most of your time trying to get stuff approved from someone that sits 15 feet from you, chasing down $1000/month clients, and getting thrown under the bus for petty nonsense. Aside from Upper management, the average age range is around 22-24. *This is not necessarily a con* given that social media is the name of the game. However, poor leadership is suffocating this place. You’ll be working for an AM that might have a year of actual experience in the industry. Does it make sense to report to someone who probably sat behind you in ENG 100 who has yet to master his/her craft in ANY discipline (especially leadership)? I didn’t think so, hence why I left. Clients: It’s highly unlikely that you will work with any real clients with significant goals and budgets. Does this make your job easier? Heck yeah! Will you fall behind in the fast-paced world of digital marketing? Absolutely (unless you keep a few side gigs – which I highly recommend). Structure: My job title changed 3 different times while I was employed at Friendemic. These titles mean nothing. When you go to apply for your next job, take them off of your resume. Any company worth its weight will laugh you out of the room if you hand them a resume that says you graduated in 2015 and you’re a senior level manager with one year of experience. You will hear “well, we’re a startup” as a go-to excuse for how unorganized everything is. Sorry, once you reach 6 years in business and multiple offices, it’s time to put on your big boy pants and get organized. Culture: You’ll make friends, bond over petty stuff that can only occur when a handful of 24-year-old kids are given a sliver of authority, and maybe learn a few things along the way. *HOWEVER* the account management culture has become very toxic. You get a mixed bag in terms of talent and leadership, but as a whole, it's not ideal. Key players left in early-mid 2016 that could spot the BS, the yes-men, and the few talented individuals that understood marketing strategy, creative AND leadership. If being in a quasi-frat at the age of 25 doesn’t sound appealing to you, I would not recommend this path. You’ll see people getting promoted based on relationships with key management rather than their quality of work (bros for life, jafeel)? You will see people being promoted to management roles when they have yet to succeed in their current role. This is real, this will confuse you, and you will wonder why you come to work every day. There are some hidden gems sprawled throughout Friendemic that will never get their due (not a personal reference as I am no gem). This will also anger you because you will get tired of seeing them get beat down day after day. Pay: Semi-standard for an entry level role. No OT (you shouldn’t need it anyway). Raises are a joke and take forever to go through. For a company with less than 100 employees, it’s kind of pathetic that a raise takes 5 weeks to get approved and another 6+ weeks to get processed. Last but not least: Two of these 4-Star reviews are fake. Do you know what the probability of two 4-star reviews being posted in the same day (April 15th, 2016) out of 10 total reviews? The company asked specific employees to post them last year. (I know that was petty, but I couldn't help it.)

Unfortunately, the downsides outweigh the pros by a lot. Early in 2017, they went through a merger with GoFanbase, and things went downhill from there. By the time I left the company, about 15 people had quit since the beginning of the year and the number has only gone up. I'm not saying that change isn't good, but they changed things in a way that was illogical. They went from having teams that had a manager and several other members with multiple responsibilities to splitting our job roles up into different departments. This (along with adopting a million different software systems, having no processes figured out beforehand, and creating a culture where we have to get approval for even tiny things) made the company structure far too complicated. I, among other people, was regularly confused about who we were supposed to go to when we needed things to get done. It was also a huge slap in the face when they made these role changes and they made a decision for a lot of the employees. Most job roles had significantly fewer responsibilities and a were a waste of our skills and talent. Management doesn't seem to notice or care about people's talents and use them to their advantage. The company culture has always been difficult to deal with and is only getting worse. Ever since I started, I felt like most (not all) of the people who ever got promotions or raises were people who were either "cool", were friends with people in management, and/or were flat out obnoxious. Moreover, they weren’t always the best workers. I also felt that some of these people took credit for others accomplishments. Management took away a lot of the tools that were used to recognize people's accomplishments, and you have to fight tooth and nail to get a raise. Management believes three things when it comes to raises: 1) Promotions don't always come with a raise (even when it requires more responsibility); 2) tenure at the company doesn't merit a raise (even when it means the employee has more experience and loyalty); and 3) we should be happy to work there even though we get paid very little. People who have asked for a raise are often faced with management asking them to accomplish a never ending list of tasks or with a thinly veiled lecture on how the company is filled with entitled millennials who should just be content to work there because it's a fun start-up culture. While this is a good job if you’re just starting out, you do not learn a lot of professional skills here. It’s the little things you never end up learning: crafting good emails; thinking on your feet; making judgment calls on your own; handling responsibility; resolving disputes with co-workers; etc.