Pros
The people—and ONLY the people in the studios—are amazing. I genuinely adored most of the people I worked with at the ground level. There was a special sort of trauma bond, especially amongst those of us who were recruited from other companies with loads of false promises.
Cons
If you are thinking of going here, I would highly encourage you to read this entire review before signing an offer. The company is genuinely running itself into the ground. It starts at the top with the CEO, COO, and CFO specifically. The CEO is an arrogant wanna-be business man that makes the most insane, uneducated, and unethical decisions for both his staff (particularly the studio teams) and clients. He promotes his family members and friends, rather than those who deserve it, who are contributing to a rapid downfall in culture. The CFO was arguably worse last year, but he is allowed to basically make any and all budgeting decisions at the expense of the studios. Yes, his job is to save money, but saving it on the frontline ruined the entire culture within the studios. The studio teams were extremely overworked, which led to a pretty fast downturn in client satisfaction and reviews. It was never the C-suite’s fault though—the studios were always blamed and ridiculed for the consequences of THEIR actions. We never could comprehend why they cut the studio experience budgets (since we are a huge revenue bucket) instead of their weekly $1000+ catered lunches in the C-suite, but oh well. The COO was the final straw for me and a lot of other people, though. She was brought in externally with a lot of big promises, such as meeting every single studio manager and working to make it better. She didn’t visit most of us, and when she did visit studios, I heard she liked to talk to “exclusive” people and barely interacted with the staff she was supposed to be “leading.” She implemented a pretty much all-year long blackout period for PTO (literally the only months that weren’t limited/no PTO at all were January-April… as if most people take vacations in the winter and early spring). Without warning, we were forced to work every weekend ON TOP OF no PTO being allowed in the summer months. This threw off our work-life balance into nonexistence, and I did hear that we would no longer get to open the studios. Why would anyone ever want a position working midday and evening shifts on top of EVERY weekend? Then, without fulfilling her promise to work for us, she started restructuring EVERYTHING. Several amazing studio staff members were terminated due to it, and unqualified people were put in their place to save money—this was at no fault of their own, but it’s really hard to learn the sales side at CADY. It just is. We were trained to hard sell up to $3,200 photo packages that were not even slightly worth that amount. It’s hard work dealing with escalation after escalation because of their shady marketing schemes. I dealt with the most unhappy parents after this restructuring and had pretty much no solutions for them because our autonomy was taken away. I went home every single day questioning my integrity/morals and feeling like an absolute scammer after getting berated for overcharging and under-delivering their senior’s photos during such an expensive year of their lives. This was particularly disappointing after such a great start to the season. It ended on such a low, insecure, and unhappy note. CADY could have a lot of potential if their entire business model wasn’t becoming increasingly shady and if they hadn’t made the changes they did at the C-suite level. Figure out a better model, invest in those that are actually successful and want to work as a team, and go from there. Stop promoting your family and friends. Stop giving new people complete power to do whatever they want at the cost of the livelihood of those in the studios. If this doesn’t happen, I’ll be shocked if CADY lasts another five years. I hope every school they partner with also starts realizing the depths of their unethical behavior, and that no one with a stable and successful job listens to their false ideals and promises in an effort to get them to work for this company. Just stay far, far away.