Real Chemistry reviews

For the longest time, I had the best experience working at W2O. I saw a few glassdoor reviews before I started that said the company culture was "clique-y" which at the time I was fine with because that didn't seem to be that big of a deal..."What company isn't clique-y?" I thought. It could have been that I was too naïve to notice the toxic culture when I had first started, but by the end I finally did.  If there is one word I could use to describe my experience at W2O it would be gaslighting. Because of this, I was constantly checking my own work, having others check it, and asked lots of questions because of pure fear of how my work would be reviewed. I was told to not ask questions because I need to use my resources first -but then if I did something wrong my manager would say "why didn't you just ask for help?" I stopped being allowed to ask questions.  My role became very inconsistent in work/tasks I was given and I was very confused all the time. I thrived at my role when I first started, but tasks became very vague and instructions were so unclear. I cannot stress enough how inconsistent the feedback I was getting was. I would also be blamed constantly for other people's mistakes and defending myself became an everyday occurrence. I became terrified of handing in work or assignments. Anytime I got an email or notification from my manager, my heart would race and I was terrified. I hated waking up for work in the morning. I know work is not meant to always be fun - at the end of the day it is work - But NO ONE should fear opening their laptop.  Also, if you have any form of mental health issue, do not expect to be supported or help whatsoever. They don't care.  We would have company town halls where upper management would speak about how important we all were and how we came first. We didn't come first. I'm not one to think ill of anyone but there are some people at this company with very selfish intentions. I would get so upset during these town halls when it was preached about how everyone was important and how amazing of a company it was. It was...for about  40 people. It was a vicious cycle of people leading in one toxic way down to the next person below them. No one is safe here and all employees are disposable. The people who I trusted as leaders turned about to be extremely two faced.   Does everyone at this company have ill intentions? No. Do a majority of managers, senior leaders and up have selfish intentions? Absolutely.  I am now at a new company which I love but I am now scarred from treatment that I am so insecure about work that I hand in and I have lost a lot of confidence in myself. I really didn't want to leave a review like this but I keep seeing the company boast about the amazing work they are doing and I just wanted to be very clear that it is a shield.

I had such high hopes when joining Real Chemistry. On the surface, it seemed like a great agency with upward mobility and a chance to work with great clients. Unfortunately, I found culture to be completely toxic. Read the other reviews and there is a common theme. Instead of addressing feedback directly, it often goes around you personally and to your manager or your managers manager. It's all very high school and just gives you intense levels of anxiety because you don't know who you can trust on the account teams. While there is some semblance of work/life balance, there is an unwritten expectation to be on and available well past your normal working hours. Being spread across multiple projects at such low utilization hours makes in next to impossible to do all the client work as promised. Budgeting and scoping seems to be a real issue across multiple accounts and timesheets are rejected constantly asking if you really spent 30 minutes doing a task or asking you to move time to internal/admin time because there isn't enough budget to go towards the work. There is a reason retention is so bad and so many good people are leaving after a year; the upper management doesn't want to invest the time in actually managing their direct reports and helping them grow. In my less than 1.5 years there, I was managed by three different managers after my first two quit.