Mothership Strategies reviews

Mothership did a (random and unneeded) restructure in April 2021 that destroyed any progress that had been made on making Mothership a good place to work. From April to now, the company has been hemorrhaging both money and staff. I think like 8-10 people in mid-level roles have left this year, basically gutting the organization. The toxicity is never-ending. A previous review touched on this, but in 2021, at least 3 managers/team leaders were randomly fired with little explanation and no contingency plans, creating total chaos. What's interesting to me is that although these people were fired, managers who have been complained about many times (formally and otherwise) have maintained their employment and been promoted up the ranks. These managers always pushed me and my colleagues to do impossible amounts of work and regularly disrespected strategists as stupid or unimportant and yet they're still there, making the company toxic and unworkable. If you're a hard worker, you will be exploited. I regularly worked from 9AM to 7PM without taking a real lunch break, even in off years. The whole employment model here is letting horrible managers fail upwards and putting progressively more work on the shoulders of young, fresh out of college employees who want to do well because it's their first job. It's exploitative. MS talks a lot about "giving new grads opportunities" but that's just because they know they can squeeze new grads and also brainwash them to become cogs in the Mothership email sweatshop without ever questioning what they're sending or doing. When articles come out criticizing MS, the senior team completely brushes them off and pushes the mentality that Mothership is full of geniuses and everyone else is stupid for (valid) criticisms. I would say there is a clique of managers and senior staff who live and breathe Mothership, and they have their favorites. If you're not in that group, you'll have a bad time, no matter how hard you work. I would break my back trying to go above and beyond, and then I realized it was pointless because of those dynamics. All of my coworkers and I who have now left are trauma-bonded from this experience. Yes, it is that bad. I talk about this job and how I was treated at therapy -- regularly. Also, Greg is delusional and thinks he's a Silicon Valley CEO. I have 0% confidence in his leadership and honestly, it's amazing that the company has made it this far under his mismanagement. tl;dr -- this is a horrible place to work and I wouldn't recommend it to my worst enemy at this point. It's a sinking ship and the stress just isn't worth it. Every day I would wake up feeling dread, and be so emotionally exhausted when I ended work I didn't have the energy to do anything. Since leaving, I have been so much happier and healthier. If you're still at Mothership and reading this -- quit. There are better places to work in Dem politics that won't abuse you (and their lists) and you'll be better off for it.

Mothership is a good place to learn about Digital Campaigning but has a very toxic culture. Everyone is managed by a "Content Specialist" and a traditional Manager. Some Content Specialists will bully and belittle you if you do not hit their "standards". The only catch is their standards are so subjective that they will contradict other Content Specialists and sometimes themselves. There have been times, I was told specifically to do something by one CS only to be criticized for doing it by the next. Since the turnover rate is so high, an employee will have about 2-3 Content Specialists in a year. Therefore, by the time someone adjusts and understands their Content Specialist's expectations, they must start adjusting to someone else's. Some of my Content Specialists were good and supportive, but most were incredibly stressful to work under. It was very exhausting and disheartening to constantly try to adapt to a VERY subjective idea of what is good while constantly being disparaged. Not all managers were bad, but from my perspective, most managers were fresh out of college and had extraordinarily little formal training to help them grow into their roles. It seemed like a lot of managers struggled themselves to figure out how to lead, which created bad team morale. I had over 3 managers during my time and only 1 had sufficient leadership skills to guide a team. Also, it seems Managers are pressured from above to constantly raise more and more money and in turn put all that pressure on the people underneath them. We were pushed to produce more and raise more without any regard for our health and wellbeing. There were times I left the office at 8 PM or 9 PM during non-election seasons because I was pushed to produce so much without any support or sympathy from my supervisors. This "work a mule, kill a mule" mentality took a toll on the mental and physical health of my teammates and me. Whenever anyone on my team would object to their workload, we were told we're not managing our time well -- although we would rarely take time off for lunch and were essentially glued to our seats from 9 AM to whenever we left. I also felt like the overall culture of the company sought to divide and conquer the employees so people could not get together and talk about how bad things are. I've been on teams where people did not physically talk to each other -- even if you were sitting next to them. If you had a question, you were expected to instant message them. I also had a manager who played games with us to try to make us turn on each other. Unfortunately, we initially fell for it until we started getting together after work, and noticed our manager individually told us things about each other to upset us. Additionally, if someone is not on your team in the company, you will have very little interaction with them. When I left, there were some people who had been there for a couple of months whose names I did not even know. When I first started at Mothership, I tried to talk and reach out to people and would get the cold shoulder. At first, I thought these individual people were just rude, but after working at Mothership, I understood that they were just falling in line with the company's culture. People at Mothership will say that those who move on just didn't have the skill/talent to cut it at the company. This is the company line to justify its high turnover rate and miserable staff. I've seen a lot of talented people move on to other firms and produce strong results. I honestly don't think Mothership cares about their employees and see people as expendable. Overall, I am grateful for the skills I gained while working for Mothership, but I'm glad I moved on. I was always stressed and sick. I constantly felt like I had to defend myself from my supervisors who were trying to railroad me. In the end, it felt like their generous benefits were not worth the mental torment I had to endure daily.