Pros
When I first joined, the work life balance was fine. Pretty chill office environment in terms of people coming/going. Lots of lunch outings that later became necessity—the office is also in a good area overall in a pretty neat building. The Happy Hours were often good—granted they usually came out of necessity for the mental well being of employees, they were typically fun all the same and about the only time there felt to be any true sense of company culture. Benchworks had the appearance of being a place on the verge of good things.
Cons
This facade quickly faded, at least among the employees who knew better due to having worked in real agency environments. Benchworks is a company operated essentially by a wealthy small town family from Maryland who aspires to break into the Philly Pharma advertising scene—with no real background in what they wanted to participate in. This was frustrating for the professionals who joined Benchworks in hopes of producing meaningful and creative work. Just a few of the many highlights from my time with their Philadelphia office: - We initially worked under a Creative Director who had the experience of a junior designer leading a team of 5 creatives with a collective 80+ years of experience (this is still relevant as it illustrates how nepotism drives the Benchworks employee roster)—to be fair this CD had been replaced by someone with far more 'resume experience' - Account executives who had no practical experience working with clients nor knowledge of what their job was supposed to entail - Aloof senior leadership team who often used Benchworks as a vehicle for their personal networking; the creative team was often being tasked with quickly churning out designs for the CEOs social network - A senior member of the leadership team was known to make inappropriate and highly offensive jokes that employees generally felt obligated to laugh off; in hindsight I was pretty ashamed of not saying anything in the moment - The work environment itself was white washed and toxic, severely lacking any sense of diversity, culture, or adherence to modern decency for an office of its size; there was a constant surplus of absurd drama going on at any given moment - The office issues culminated in half of the Philadelphia office leaving en masse over the course of a couple months