To start, we work at a small marketing firm doing a very specific type of marketing. We as a team are incredibly close knit and I really adore the people I work with.
Essentially, we work in a section of marketing that’s very specific in what we do. I don’t want to get too detailed. We definitely have competitors, but since what we do is sort of new, there’s a trial and error, learn to streamline part of the process.
Our boss is very hard to read. He’s always been cool headed and kind, not aggressive or rude or demanding, but very, very hard to READ. I get nervous around people like that—you cannot tell if they mean what they say, what their real motives are, what they actually are feeling because there’s a facade of calm. I’m not sure if it’s a facade or if he’s that flat. It’s hard to tell.
CEO and his dad (our “Human Resources”) expect the corporate bullshit. Work hard to earn hard, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work should be THE PRIORITY, the company is the most important thing, blabbady blah. Too bad we’re all 20s and 30s and our generation is entirely sick of being fucked over. Higher living costs? Lower wages!
Our salaries are disgustingly tiny (even for marketing persons, graphic designers who have real talent, etc) and they are stingy with wages. I can say they really rob us. One of our marketing people who designs advertising spreads and works with our social media is making 35k a year. He’s been here two years and has excessive work. They will not give him a raise. We’re understaffed because we underpay.
Expectations are never thoroughly gone over with us. The CEO comes up with ideas on a whim, implements them, and gets upset when they aren’t done to the standards he had (which he’ll never spend two minutes to give anyone the standards—apparently we have to read his mind). Every deadline ever is pushed back by months or even years, because CEO cannot line up what’s more or less important and is side-tracking us with constant other projects or he’s annoyed at the work done when he didn’t even give enough information as to HOW he wanted it done.
From a sales perspective, the whole sales team had told him that making all our updates digital and automatic/prefilled emails and whatnot is a BAD idea. Some of what we do is very complex, people don’t understand, and they want a custom explanation and to talk with a real human. It’s called building trust. He disagreed, we did what he wanted for six months and now he’s backtracked because it’s tanked our sales. Hmm. The entire sales team told you this was a horrible idea. Now I’m making less in commission for things I didn’t do.
Basically, it’s constant deadlines never met due to CEO changing plans or having standards that he won’t communicate beforehand, low wages and “work harder if you want more money” standards when I work with VERY competent people, lots of changing his mind at the last minute, switching things around and ignoring our requests, and him having no idea what any of us do on a daily basis. You ask him an important work question via chat… he responds maybe 10% of the time. There’s only a dozen of us.
I am the only full time sales expert. He made this “goal” of 2022 to work with 850 more accounts in the next year. That’s impossible unless we hire 10 more of me. They hire two new sales people except they change their role so they’re barely doing sales. Then he gave me more responsibilities outside sales. The goal has been rendered utterly impossible, and I get no explanation. It feels as if he’s spouting bullshit just for morale (maybe his own) and doing the opposite to hit these goals.
ANYWAY: we are meeting on Friday to come up with issues we have with the company and our treatment, and we will ALL be standing on a United front to hopefully fix these issues (I know—they won’t be fixed, but at least we can’t say we didn’t try).
Every single one of us is frustrated. We are so underplayed. We feel the company as an idea has potential, but our CEO is not doing his job. His dad is the type to tell us to stay late without pay because we’re supposed to care oh so much, and that’s how you show you’re a go getter! Except we all see right through that.