Pros
- Lots to learn - Opportunities to improve your portfolio - Flexible working from home hours - Nice team in the Toronto office
Cons
Sadly my cons are many and very detailed to an overall miserable experience at CSC **Fear driven culture - From the very beginning, even throughout my 8 week long interview process it was made very clear that they only hire 'the best of the best' and I was reminded daily that I need to show that level of commitment so that the CEO is aware he has the best team possible for his company. There was certainly the feeling that I should feel lucky to be in this company. Very quickly after starting it became clear that there was a firing culture that was very real - if you didn't work your best to show the CEO your worth - including the pressure of coming up with personal projects constantly to show you are working to improve the company - then you were fired. Over my interview process, two people who interviewed me were fired and then shortly after starting my old work colleague who referred me was also fired. **All fear with no benefits - it felt like the only incentive you ever had to work your best was to not get fired. There was zero company culture. Zero workplace motivation. Long hours. Massive amounts of work. Huge amounts of pressure and stress - all for the benefit of not being fired. **Unreasonable work ethics - I was asked to work freelance over some weeks of Nov/Dec 2018 before I started, which I happily agreed to do, outlining clearly my limited availability in December as I had to leave the country for the holidays. On my last day of availability, I was contacted to create copy for a FULL website. I was suddenly being looped in on emails to start copy on a week-long job - that I was expected to do in the one day of availability I had. Obviously, this was impossible, and being a new starter I wanted to make the best impression so I ended up losing 4 days of my trip to Europe with my family, including paid events, to work on a job I didn't have the available time for. A week later, on Christmas Day at 3am in the morning, I was emailed directly by Justin, the CEO himself, and told I need to write a press release. I wasn't due to start at CSC full-time till the 7th January. I, of course, declined as I wasn't available upon which Justin replied looping in several senior members of the company and asked me to state to him what I plan on bringing to the company and what I will deliver in my role as copywriter. It was a hugely demoralizing red flag before I even started. **Unprofessional & impersonal management - Around 6 months into my role as copywriter, I was asked by my direct manager if I would like to move from the marketing team to the design team, which I was very happy with. Upon this decision, a meeting was arranged and I was emailed a list of new key performance expectations upon joining the design team - it all seemed pretty normal to me - with the move and new manager, my expectations as a copywriter were being reviewed and refreshed. Two weeks later I receive an email from HR from my manager asking me to sign a document confirming the change - upon opening the email it is a copy of the email I received initially, except it includes a whole section which was removed stating I am being put on disciplinary and a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). The words PIP or disciplinary were not used once during any meeting, phone call or email, and I had never been approached about errors in my work, my time keeping or any other part of my performance at CSC. I quickly arranged a meeting with the managers to ask for an explanation and there didn't seem to be one. They apologized for it being unclear and had no explanation as to why I had never been made aware of any performance issues. I was then placed on disciplinary for 6 weeks apparently to improve my copy I was producing - with no detailed feedback over what I had ever done wrong. At the end of my disciplinary, I had to ask all three managers 4 times for a meeting and confirmation that I had successfully completed my disciplinary - only to be told when there's time they will give me feedback. I spent 6 weeks terrified and stressed every day I would lose my job, and then at the end of it the managers couldn't even care to tell me if my disciplinary was over and if my job was secure. Instead, they were too busy sharing photos of their cats on the company slack channel. I was disgusted by this treatment and stress I felt and I left the company 6 weeks later.
