One thing is very clear from my experience working at this agency: while the owner goes to great lengths to make his employees believe that they are valued, they are in reality disposable and will be fired / laid off / etc. at the drop of the hat if the bottom line says so. There is an *extremely* high turnover rate at this business.
Other notes:
Hiring trends - The owner will often hire bootcamp grads, career switchers, or generally inexperienced workers, not give them any support or mentorship, overload them with projects and then fire them if they don't improve under these circumstances. Rather than hiring this type of employee with the long-term goal of developing their skills, he pushes them to their limit and if they can't handle it then he lets them go. Remember: the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
Turnover - It is extremely high. The owner hires and fires in wild swings in order to capitalize on market trends, but without making it clear to the new employees that that is their role. The work force turns over annually, with only a small handful of employees staying long-term.
Management - The owner also goes to great lengths to make sure that the office is politically correct (this is good), but then ignores his own rules by making inappropriate comments. Example: while playing a board game at lunch an employee was dealt a card called the Queen several times in a row. In response, the owner put on an offensively stereotypical voice and said something along the lines of "oh, you're such a queen".
Office culture - If you enjoy socializing at all at work (aside from over lunch hour), this is not the place for you. People show up 5 minutes before the day starts, work straight through until lunch, sometimes play board games over the lunch hour, then head back to their desk for the rest of the day. Employees are often behind on deadlines and scared to death to take a break / chat for a few minutes.
Location - It's in New Westminster.
Deceit - the owner will often dangle carrots in front of employees then take them away. Raises will be verbally promised, but when the time comes they turn out to have been a "misunderstanding". The job posting will list one wage, but when the position is offered that initial wage will turn out to "have been posted in error".
Quality of work - This is not unique to this agency, but while the business claims to produce high-quality, highly customized websites, they border very closely on a template, and if you look through the agency's portfolio you will see many similarities across projects. This is not the fault of the designers or UX team, but the "quantity over quality" approach to the business that leads to this being the case. The owner is also obsessed with time tracking, so employees rush to cut corners and finish sooner rather than spend the extra time to do it right. Once again, this is not unique to this agency, but something to keep in mind.
