Luckily I did not work here for 12 years, as the title states, but it sure felt that way.
First, there is an extreme effort to squeeze every last drop of efficiency from employees, with mostly detrimental results. You will be asked to track every single minute of your day in "state-of-the-art" tracking software. The reasoning is this will help identify and streamline tasks that take too long, so you can be more efficient. Sounds pretty on paper, but you will find yourself spending so much time tracking your time, that there is an entire section dedicated to track your time-tracking! Alas, no matter how efficient you become, you will soon take on another client/account, adding to your workload, and no, it will not come with a pay raise. It’s an amazing feeling calculating your salary into an hourly rate at Path Interactive, it seems to magically get lower the longer you work here, in fact, it is inversely proportional to your productivity!
The managers, although very knowledgeable in their field, are mostly void of basic social, communication and managerial skills, and struggle directing in a normal, respectful manner. You will find yourself going through conflicting instructions between managers and CEOs. One manager in particular finds joy in calling out your mistakes, and provides "feedback" in a highly sarcastic and passive aggressive manner via the use of open ended questions. The "great jobs" and "thank yous" come around as often as a dentist visit, dont expect any gratitude unless you've somehow come up with a revolutionary and game changing idea.
To be fair, managers are highly influenced by directives from the higher-ups, and are constantly put in difficult situations where they must manage too many accounts while being constantly understaffed, resulting in little bandwidth to plan or course-correct. I learned a great deal from the training they provided during my time here, it is unfortunate that not enough bandwidth is available for them to properly manage and to provide adequate feedback.
Probably the biggest con at path, is the performance-based bonus structure, a dysfunctional incentive for upper management that is carried out each month (supposedly) Basically, if a certain performance threshold is reached at the end of the month, a bonus is issued. Unfortunately, salaries take part of this calculation, meaning that the higher your salary, the more must be made up in revenue each month to reach the bonus threshold. this creates a strong conflict of interests, and naturally, management avoids promoting or hiring as little as humanly possible. Often management will assign new business to existing and overworked staff, ultimately increasing your workload while providing ZERO additional compensation. Leadership never shared exact details of how to reach the bonus, which is bizarre considering they sell you on this as a means to motivate you.
This has resulted in a broken system where promotions are few and far between. The effects of this are slave-like conditions, decreased morale, and lower quality of work, you simply cannot invest the time that is needed to properly manage your ever-increasing # of accounts, as interesting as they may be. Be wary if you see upper management particularly happy and cheerful one day, it’s likely they have acquired new business and hired no-one. Their happiest days will be your most dreaded. How’s that for dysfunctional?
Behind the time-tracking nuisance, phantom bonus incentives and unfairly low wages, you have higher-ups that are actually very friendly and by-the-book. Meetings like the “Monday Huddle” are common, a recurring exercise to implement what I imagine is the latest chapter in the “Managing Your Workforce” handbook (even if your only thought the entire time is to go back to your desk so you can get home before double digit hours at night) The meetings discuss mind-bending topics such as "how an additional 15 minutes of effort after work can yield great results" or "how to get organized to get more efficient" etc etc. They also host fun gatherings and outings from time to time. Despite their honest attempts at enriching the culture, it is unfortunate that fair compensation and a decent work/life balance is at the bottom of the list, and only considered when someone is threatening to leave, or when they finally realize that staying past midnight still isn't enough to keep your accounts afloat.