Pros
Good culture, hard working and dedicated designers.
Cons
I honestly wasn’t going to write a review for this place, but I felt obligated to help other design professionals not make the same mistake that I made by going to work for Fort West. I could rant on how dysfunctional and unprofessional this place can be, but I’ll keep it short. I will say what I’m reading in the other reviews is quite accurate for the most part, and my experience was very similar to what is being said in the majority of the other reviews. I will agree, it’s not an environment for everyone. There are some really great and talented people there. Dedicated, hard working, and smart. Everyone was hired for a reason. There is a sub-culture there and some great peer-to-peer team structure for sure. When there wasn’t giant fires to put out, the culture was usually fun, but at times there was a little “high school clique” vibe, and certain individuals have no problem throwing blame around and not taking accountability for missteps and bad communication with clients and internally amongst the various teams. Lot’s of things fell between the cracks on a very consistent basis. This led to constant confusion as far as deadlines, scopes or work and employee responsibilities and expectations. The work is pretty boring and uninspiring from a design perspective, pretty basic and average projects for a smaller design agency. There really isn’t any form of structure or best practices or process to speak of. They seemed to grow a little too fast, there was no on-boarding, you were expected to just know what to do at all times without having vital information from the client or leadership team. They claim that they are trying to be “unconventional” as an agency, truthfully they are just unorganized and don’t really know what they’re doing, they “figure it out” as they go. This doesn’t work for everyone. Employees were constantly exposed to unprofessional actions, arguments, conflict, etc. It’s was pretty messy awkward at times. They claim that’s all part of being “transparent”, in all reality its just ugly and makes people feel super awkward. Definitely a high-stress, anxiety filled environment.