There Are Better Places Than This
Pros
Pros...It's a job? If you absolutely, 100%, need to work somewhere at this very moment then, by all means, work at Pennmark. I made the same choice when faced with the prospect of accepting their offer and moving into a full time design/marketing position or working a regular job while doing freelance gigs on the side to pad my resume. I did my research when I applied, read the reviews both here and on Google, and knew what I was getting into. I also knew that I needed solid work experience. That's what this position gave me, the ability to move on to something better. If you're reading this and you're making the same consideration I did take this advice: Keep your resume polished and your eyes on the next opportunity. One other pro that I could take from this experience: as one of the worst working experiences of my life, it makes everything else a breeze. If you can wake up every morning and go to this place and get through the day you can work anywhere.
Cons
Management is absolutely horrible. The CEO's approach to management is to yell and make threats. The CFO's approach is condescension and passive-aggressive language. To show that I'm not just coming on here to throw an entire company under the bus due to a bad experience: the Construction Manager wasn't bad, he expected a lot from you but would sit down and take the time to go through things with you, answer any questions you had, and generally try to help you out. Their turnover rate is horrendous and alarming. People would come and go so quickly that it wasn't worth getting to know them until it seemed like they were going to last longer than a week. They have this whole approach, a part of their process, where they just throw you in the deep end of the pool and expect you to know or figure out how to swim. I feel like this helped contribute to their turnover issue; people that couldn't keep up or adapt quickly enough weren't considered to be company material. They would talk about this fact like they were proud of it, like it made them a bigger, better company because people couldn't keep up with them. They openly speak poorly of current/former employees. The atmosphere is tense, and not the "high pressure workplace" kind of tense. The only time I ever really saw people relax was when the CEO and/or CFO were out for the day. Their pay and benefits are a joke. I was offered a ridiculously low hourly rate, the lowest I've ever been offered in my line of work, and the benefits as described were terrible.
