Compensation: While it’s widely known that agency compensation tends to be lower, Brainlabs compensation is much lower than market rates elsewhere, including other local agencies.
Opportunities: Promotions will largely depend on clients and what's a "company need". Your success is limited to what the company thinks is necessary. This also means you may not get promoted despite being ready for the next role.
Acquisition: In all fairness, my former company was acquired by Brainlabs just before the pandemic. The way in which we were integrated, how changes were communicated to us, and the lack of compassion and empathy throughout the process made the transition all the more challenging.
Leadership: Leadership’s decisions often leave me scratching my head, along with the little to no transparency and communication about how and why decisions are made. For example, leadership set a company-wide pay freeze as a result of the pandemic, yet still hired new executives including CEOs for US and UK (despite having roles like US President), buying books for employees to read about DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), or acquiring another company. It’s disheartening when money is spent on cheap swag items and books and to then hear coworkers who aren’t being paid (yet) for their additional responsibilities or promotions. In my experience, leadership misses the mark when trying to empathize with employees and create programs/policies that actually help. For example, in thinking about how to deal with workplace burnout, leadership thought adding one additional holiday per year for UK employees would help.
DEI: Leadership places a large emphasis on the company’s DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) committee. Yet there’s a line in the handbook that states, “We do marketing, not politics.” How does a company who tries to paint itself as one who cares about diversity, equity and inclusion not care about the politics that very much affect minority groups?
