Unprofessional and toxic work culture - Art Director Buddybrand Employee Review

Team spirit among colleagues.

Being friendly, innovative, progressive, "best buddies" is just company branding. It's basically a show of unexperienced leaders and their ideas. Buddybrand runs a creative agency like you'd run a factory. Quantity over quality. 90% of the staff is considered as tools rather than professionals. These employees are there just to support the few, that are considered as leaders or "creative geniuses." The company hires a lot of people, who are new to the industry. This way they can keep their expenses low. People usually stay just around 6-18 months. Inequality. Salaries can vary more than 25% between the same job title and experience level. They also fool you with company benefits. You can tell if they value you as an employee based on 1. Do you have a BVG card? 2. Have you got more than minimum vacation days? 3. Have you got the latest technology? Buddybrand thinks that offering coffee, beer and snacks is enough to built a community of buddies. And they seem to be really proud of this company perk.

Buddybrand has chosen amazing people to work for them. Atmosphere at the office is great.

People don't seem to be valued that much, and it shows as lack of personal growth plans and poor salary. Employees get rarely promoted. Those who do get noticed and promoted, seem to stay longer. As a digital agency it seems rather odd that buddybrand is not interested of investing into basic technical devices. Sometimes employees need to use their personal equipment for work without compensation, since the company doesn't want to invest working tools like laptops, pads and phones. Buddybrand has a lot of hierarchy, which also has a negative impact on the quality of work they are producing to the client. The company is skilled at creating a lot of content for customers, but is lacking knowledge, processes, network (and will to invest?) for greater ideas.