I thought “Oh cool, a new up and coming design agency, this could lead somewhere big”.
I've mentioned this business in passing before, but shortly after I left when I realised this boat was sinking I leapt away before it took me down with it:
I joined a brand new design agency that had zero funding except to pay it's employees to carry out meaningless BAU (Business As Usual) work for it's parent company.
They asked that I bring an 'Entrepreneurial Spirit' to the business… Which to me translated as “Just work hard and all will be well.”
I kept thinking up ways to go to events to promote the business in other cities to get it moving… they objected as there wasn't the funding in place because the agency wasn't making any money yet… Oh goody.
It's only now that in hindsight I realised I was basically being asked to Co-Run a design agency for an entry level salary in my industry.
Glad I left, glad they went under after I did… That agency didn't deserve to exist with so little help behind it… and I bet they were expecting me to try and run it outside of working hours after the director had already spent the week sucking me dry of what little energy I already had left having to deal with his daily non-sensical perfectionist bullshit. (I fucking hate Helvetica now).
Morale of the story, work only as hard as you are paid. Not what it says you should be doing.
If they wanted me to help run the agency, I would've expect almost double that wage.