Where to begin with Red Ventures? Well, it's a hive-mind, dystopian nightmare to say the least. At all employee meetings, you gather to listen to the CEO, Ric bloviate about the company endlessly. It's essentially a kumbayah for all the members of the personality cult surrounding Ric Elias.
Performance reviews are a joke. You are graded on a bunch of soft-skill junk that has nothing or very little to do with the actual work you are doing, regardless of if you are a designer, developer, accounts, etc. It's a one-size-fits-all approach. The format entails anyone can say anything about you and your manager (depending on how much of a dbag he/she is) will take it as truth. For example, I was literally reprimanded because “I didn't attend enough after work happy hours”. Bear in mind, unless it was an official RV-sanctioned event, the company did not pay for it, so the bill was on me to pay.
You will never stop going to meetings. Out of your 8 hour day, you will spend *maybe* 30 minutes on actual work.
For designers, forget about process or organization. They don't believe in that. You're at the mercy of recent college grads that RV thought it was a good idea to hire as "Customer Experience Associates" or "Analysts" or "Associates" though no one actually knows what their title really is. These kids dictate your day, your projects, and your life at RV.
RV brags about their cafeterias and subsidized food--don't believe the hype. Bring your own lunch, or you will have diarrhea every day. The ingredients are cheap, low grade dog food, prepared by (what looks like) ex-cons with room-temperature IQs.
RV "senior leadership" is just a club, and you ain't in it, despite RV senior leadership claiming there is no hierarchy at RV. Isn't that convenient?
Have any questions, comments or complaints? Do you want to keep your job? Yeah forget about trying to change the status quo at RV. For all the drivel that comes out of Ric's mouth about progress and change, he and RV are ALL ABOUT STATUS QUO. Do not rock the boat or you will be de-personed. You'll find yourself staring at a negative performance review, a meeting with HR, and you'll be gone. So just keep your mouth shut.
Greed is good. It's all about the Benjamins at RV. Ric loves to virtue-signal about how much he helps the world, and how generous he/RV is to us lowly employees, but he worships the almighty dollar, don't you mistake it. After the pandemic hit, RV went on a firing spree, only to go on to purchase multiple billion-dollar companies. You might say “hey, that’s business”. Well, sure, maybe. But when your entire company mantra is “we believe in people” and then you fire those same people during their most vulnerable and trying times, that proves you DON’T believe in people at all. You believe in the bottom line.
Red Ventures pumps itself up to be more than what it really is—a marketing company to sell garbage that you don’t need. They garbage that you don’t need and will do anything to get into your digital space. Having firsthand experience, I’ve seen the dark UX practices, crooked business dealings, and shady handling of YOUR personally identifiable information. I do not trust the products and companies Red Ventures handles or services, and they are many.
Again, Red Ventures claims to value people, but what they mean by that is this: they value the money that people bring to make them rich. They don’t mean “we value our employees”. They will use, abuse, chew up and spit out anyone and everyone if it means they’ll make a buck.
There is SO much more to divulge, but what I can say is just do not work at Red Ventures. I’m sure there are better companies out there that value you, value your time, value your experience and expertise.
