Thesis reviews

Thesis is a company that touts itself as a progressive agency that cares about its people, but in reality it's an immature, performative agency managed by an insecure and inexperienced leadership team. The agency has made some admirable efforts to hire more BIPOC in their workforce, but their leadership team largely does not represent that population. In fact, many of the folks on the senior leadership team who were elevated were close friends with the CEO. I worked for this company for many years and even after years of stellar performance reviews and nearly universal praise for my contributions, I was never given the opportunity to move up. Meanwhile, "yes men" and those closest to the senior leadership clique were given raises and promotions very quickly. It wasn't until I finally put in my notice that the conversation of "how can we keep you here" came up." I was told when I was hired years ago that "you won't be blown away by the paycheck" and, boy, was that true. I've heard some pretty atrocious stories about what colleagues of mine were making and many who have left have been pleasantly surprised with what people in comparable roles can actually make. Leadership was always extremely hesitant to give raises and leveraged a lot of gaslighting to make you feel like you were out of line for even asking.

It’s a toxic environment. The agency is structured poorly. Leadership flosses a mantra of trendy business buzzwords and idealistic industry jargon. The workforce was highly unbalanced, aggressively staffing interns and agency first timers while in a state of constant turnover at Senior and Director level positions—there was no plan for me a middle. Unfortunately, what was sold as an amazing opportunity turned into a giant step backward for my career and professional development.