Cambrick Yard reviews

Cambrick Yard is not a “good place to start” your career unless you’re looking for a crash course in Toxic Work Environment 101. To put it succinctly, this is a place where you will receive increasingly higher workloads for no additional pay with nonstop moving performance goalposts. CY owns the popular Disney Food Blog and All Ears brands and the work culture is largely driven by results. This means that management’s ultimate goal is to get as many clicks/views as possible 24/7, which often comes at the detriment of the mental health and well-being of their employees. There is no such thing as a work/life balance with CY and most employees end up working 10+ hour days for below-market value pay with no breaks and unrealistic daily goals. Don’t even think about taking a lunch break or signing off before 7PM, even if you started your day at 8AM. You can expect to be micromanaged to the extent that you will be posting things like “be right back” in Slack in order to step away for a mere 5 minutes, lest you receive angry “Where are you and where is your [task]??” messages. A huge red flag is that performance reviews are not offered unless/until you request a raise. At that point, during my tenure, I was tasked with submitting an elaborate PowerPoint presentation detailing all my responsibilities and achievements -- that management would not even openly discuss with me. Other employees who asked for raises were issued (electronically, no in-person meetings here) a list of serious criticisms that had never been brought up prior and a "new challenge" for a higher (and even more unattainable) goal before management would deem them “deserving” of a raise. CY relies on their loyal DFB and All Ears fan base for consistent applicants who, like me, tell themselves that this is a “dream job,” but you are no more than a number or a click to them. Even if you prove yourself valuable and successful in your role, you are very, very replaceable, and they make this fact known. To be frank, I was thrilled to get a job with CY and I worked extremely hard with the intention to grow and develop there. In the end, I left disappointed when it became clear that they did not have the same intentions set for me.

I’m ~somewhat~ grateful for my time at Disney Food Blog and AllEars, as I was able to massively expand my skillset and build my resume while there. However, that professional growth came at the expense of an ASTRONOMICAL personal decline in my mental health, my personal identity, and my relationships with my family and friends. One of the leaders of this company repetitively said work life balance was a “myth made up by gen z to get out of working hard,” which never sat right with me. But they meant it. You are expected to devote your ~entire~ life to this job—24 hours a day, 7 days a week, holidays, “PTO”—for an insultingly low paycheck. To be fair, they tell you this upfront—emphasizing that this job “is not for everyone” and takes “extreme commitment.” But EVEN then, no one can really expect how draining it actually ends up being. There isn’t “limited” work life balance. There is quite literally NO work life balance. Whatsoever. This job WILL become your entire life. When they warn you upon hiring that it is not for everyone, don’t take that warning lightly. It’s not an exaggeration. It will drain any ounce of personal identity you have outside of Disney/Cambrick Yard—and your external relationships will wither, as you will have no time to build them up. Don’t expect to be able to go get cocktails with friends (unless you’re staring at your phone the entire time). Don’t expect to be able to have a dinner at home with your computer screen shut. Don’t expect to be available on holidays. Don’t expect to be able to enjoy “approved vacations.” Don’t expect to have a life. You won’t. If you do, for even a day, you’ll fall so behind and will never be able to catch up—and more work will continue to pile on. When you’re in it, you feel the energy and the praise (and the favoritism for some)—it’s hard to step outside of your peripheral and realize just how awful your situation really is. At the CONSTANT pleading of my friends and family—I finally stepped away, and it was the best decision I could’ve made. I like to believe the leaders of this company just don’t understand what their employees are going through (though the longer I’ve been gone, and the more I’ve reflected on my time, the harder it’s been to convince myself of that). I would never speak ill of the CY leaders as people. The space is competitive and they’ve worked crazy hard to be as successful as they are—and they expect their staff to do the same—I get that. But they need to ~seriously~ take a step back and reflect on what “working hard” means. Sure, granting young and eager workers the opportunity to learn is GREAT. But those opportunities are bordering on the line of exploitation—and are fueled by manipulative love bombing (soooo much manipulative love bombing) and the idea that “thousands of people dream about being in the place you are now, so don’t take it for granted.” No job is worth giving up your entire life.