idfive Reviews

- Creative turnover is very high with an almost annual rotation of the team. As a new employee, this was excused to me as "the wave of past employees who left couldn't adjust to the new company structure." As I listened to those around me express their frustration, stress, and desire to also leave as soon as possible, I learned that the company structure is top-heavy and doesn't give enough time, support, or credit to those actually doing the work. - CEO will very often complain about how much the benefits (decent, but nothing to gloat about) cost the company and how grateful employees should be towards him and the rest of the leadership. - Employees are *strongly* encouraged to vote for the company as a "Best Place to Work." - Holiday vacation and bonuses are not a guarantee and are held ransom to encourage a certain kind of productivity. - Despite being an advertising agency, idfive is by no means a "creative" place to work. The creative team is set up to fail with tight timelines. Creatives should be prepared to be blamed for any problems that should have been caught during the early strategic phases of a project. - "Culture" at idfive is initially introduced as progressive and one that encourages a healthy work/life balance. That culture does not exist. As you start at idfive you'll be told people stay for the culture, but you'll quickly learn the "culture" is a guilt tactic and is, at its core, leadership patting each other on the back when they work late. - Chit chat is frowned upon and you'll be reminded how it costs the company money. - Leadership can be petty and do not give or receive feedback well. This produces a stressful environment where employees are always ready to be blamed or scolded. - HR does not exist and is in fact the head of finance? When diversity and equity issues are brought up, they're quickly swept under the rug.

There's a lot of talk about culture and only working with clients that want to do good in the world. The reality is this far from the truth. The culture consists of forced social activities often after work or on weekends. On the rare chance that an event is held during work hours it is held over employees where they're told they should be grateful. Even going as far as to say exactly how much money the company is losing for you to be there and how much the event cost. Another big part of the culture is that there is no room for "egos" but this seems to only apply to select employees and to management. Another key saying is "there's no such this as this isn't my job", while this sounds good it is used to take advantage of employees who feel that they cannot say no to work or say that they're busy resulting in unbearable work loads. As far as clients go there are some that do good but over the past year it has become about the money. The idea of looking before you leap does not exists with new clients continually being added without thought on how to manage the business, whose going to manage the business, or if it's a good idea in the first place. This also results in less than transparent business practices. Based on the way that the company holds everything over it's employees, guilts them when they speak up, and squeezes employees to always do more it is apparent that the companies priorities are not it's employees. There is no HR and conflicts of interest within the company with the CEO married to another employee that has been promoted rapidly (he met while working together as CEO and partial owner). There is little to no room to address any issues within the company nor does there seem to be anyone properly trained to do so. I would highly suggest this as the CEO company often makes very inappropriate jokes in very public venues. With all of this said and you end working with this company you'll be told that the high turnover is either because people cannot hack it, they don't want to good, or they couldn't handle the restructuring.