Directive’s CEO and the marketing team loves to portray a false image of what Directive really is. All the positive reviews you’re reading are either written by employees who got asked to write a positive review by the CEO himself (or the marketing team) or it’s from recent hires who absolutely have no idea what they’re in for. Directive is an agency that preaches work-life-balance and a false sense of culture but here’s the simple truth: THERE IS NO WORK-LIFE-BALANCE HERE. You are constantly working longer than your 40hrs a week. You are constantly working on weekends. You are constantly stressed. Don’t believe the lies they’ll try to feed you. Employees are expected to do a consultant’s job while getting paid as a specialist. The only positive things to say are: The flexible work-hours (you can work from 7am-4pm, 8am-5pm, and 9am-6pm) and the ability to work remote. Anyway, if you’re kind enough to scroll down, you’ll find another negative review, where the CEO replies back spewing lies. This whole capacity model that Directive created is a joke. Don’t just throw in numbers and percentages to try to sound smart and manipulate your employees. We get it. You have a Masters. You created a capacity model without any contingency plan forgetting (or choosing not to) realize that certain accounts require more time than others. Instead, you boxed them all equally. The root problem with this company is the non-existent structure. Unfortunately, the CEO doesn’t (or refuses to) see how bad his employees are actually feeling. The people that don't see how big the structure issue is, are the ones that the CEO manipulated to believe that he really cares. If you really care CEO then why not listen to your employees? Don’t try to wiggle your way around their answers to YOUR questions. They are the ones working for you. Listen to them. At the end of the day, the Directors are also too scared to confront him about the true issues because the CEO wants PERFECT results at ALL cost. The Directors (especially one of them) does verbally bash your work on the one-on-one meetings that are suppose to be beneficial but instead your work if being called “stupid” and “dumb”. The lack of respect is REAL here. Also, because of the lack of structure, the unlimited-PTO is a laughable matter. You are expected to work ahead of time before taking your vacation. Truth is, you will REALLY have to work 80hrs one week in order to take one week off. The only employees who can actually benefit out of the unlimited-PTO without stressing beforehand are the Directors, Leads, and Account Managers. Because yes, this is a place where favoritism exists. Also, the whole mandatory blog post all employees need to write each quarter. Another laughable matter. Most of the blog posts written ended up being published on Directive’s site instead of the reputable publications the CEO mentioned. The compensation that started to take place not so long ago is only based off the approval of the post. So, there is no guarantee you’ll ever see that money. Also, if the blog posts are being published on Directive’s blog, how exactly does that help our careers? Only a handful (from the favorites) got published on MOZ, G2Crowd, and Semrush. At the end of the day, the main goal is to increase Directive’s organic traffic. No matter how much they make you feel like you can bring issues up, when you do, they understand and agree with you but they end up not changing anything. Why? Because the CEO is too eager to grow and get his business somewhere. At this point, just be honest. Either say you want to grow and it’ll cause structure issues and workload issues or don’t say anything at all. Be truthful and stop selling your lies in office hours.
Long story short: To those curious about working here because their social media accounts look SO fun, please do yourself a favor and RUN. Don’t apply to this place if you care about work-life-balance, your health, and your mental state.
