THE COMPANY:
Watch what the company does and ignore what it says. It has a shiny, idealistic veneer born out of its sales-focused culture. Underneath that is a hectic machine with little empathy. The “family” culture, as is common, is an effective tool for emotionally placating employees to do more work for less money.
Trust the bad reviews. I’ve read through most of them here, and they correspond to things that I witnessed or circulated internally as part of the Madwire's lore.
This company has solicited Glassdoor reviews from employees, especially new employees. These help pad the ratings here on Glassdoor.
Madwire removes itself and its Marketing360 product from nearly every platform on which it cannot control or remove poor reviews. Go ahead, try to find them on a site you would normally expect to see reviews on and not the random 3rd party sites that populate search results. Ask yourself, why would a proficient digital marketing agency do that?
Madwire is great for young people who don’t yet know how to value or stand up for themselves professionally. It is not good for people with health issues or families. Leaders are untouchable. Work here if you are a perfectly abled young person who does not understand your value.
They have gotten better now, but look for responses to older reviews on here. Most commonly, it was some form of non-apology and a subtle attack on the reviewer's integrity. This reflects the true nature of the company I experienced and heard about through coworkers. Trying to communicate that you’re tired, burnt out, or a process isn’t working may result in some mirroring followed by a “but” and some form of “we’re not for everyone”, excusing themselves of responsibility.
BURNOUT:
The title pretty much covers it. Burnout culture is real here. I don’t know anyone who wasn’t exhausted on some level. The way the company structures its monthly goals is relentless and ever-increasing.
It’s not so much that Madwire hires unskilled people, it's more about the pace not allowing employees to do quality work.
CULTURE AND HEALTH:
As mentioned before, I discourage from working here anyone who might have physical or mental health challenges. Madwire will cover just enough ground to satisfy basic HR requirements, but nothing more. They do so with infrequent Lunch and Learn events, and with shallow inspirational quotes easily found on Instagram/Pinterest that reinforce the “work harder” culture.
The “cry rooms” are real, physical rooms at the office that most everyone knows about.
There is no DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) focus/group at this company. Expect the bare minimum that fulfills basic legal requirements. The engineering department is mostly male and white.
Unlimited vacation policy is somewhat a joke, but for those with monthly quotas, there is zero allowance given for the time taken off. If you take a week off, you still need to meet the same quota as if you worked the entire time.
BENEFITS AND PAY:
Expect to be underpaid, though it depends on your role. For some industries, Madwire is roughly par for the course. For others, such as Software Engineers, the pay and benefits for some folks bordered on insultingly low.
Their healthcare is significantly expensive if you are married and/or have kids. For single folks it is workable.
When I initially became what the company would qualify as a leader, I got zero pay raise with a possible one in 3-6 months. They forgot. I had to nag them. Same with my performance reviews too. It’s better now, but during my first few years at the Madwire folks in my department didn’t receive consistent pay increases or performance reviews.
This is one area where I did see improvement over time. Not perfect, but it was getting better.
It took a while to see, but it became clear that all of these pattern were trickling down from the top of the company.
LEADERSHIP:
Madwire is constantly restructuring and changing direction. There is little-to-zero long-term strategy. Everything is critically urgent, possibly on fire, and our absolute top priority. Until a month later, when the current task still isn’t complete, but now a new critical priority has popped up.
If you’re lucky enough to get a leader with a backbone that will protect you from the rest of the company, then it’ll be a reasonable job. Otherwise, it might be miserable. Those that survive at this company do so through cynicism and detachment.
If you become a leader, you better be a “yes man”. Otherwise, you may burn out trying to protect your team from the constant barrage of overwork and changing processes/requirements. Madwire burns through leaders consistently. If the leader doesn’t leave, they eventually will be let go for a wide assortment of reasons. For many, the moment you become a leader the clock starts ticking.
When COVID initially hit, they said they would keep the team together and not fire anyone. Within a couple of days, they had silently let people go through restructuring.
The engineering group has had high turnover for at least a couple of years now.
CONCLUSION:
In the end, this company operates in a “red ocean”. A highly competitive, narrow-margin market filled with rivals, and all of them exist at the whim of the world's largest global ad networks (Google, Facebook, etc). Without having a truly original (“blue ocean”) offering, massive time and energy is spent keeping pace with constant changes from the platforms we use and our competitor’s innovations. This results in a reactive business model that involves quite a bit of flailing and “urgent” changes.
Leadership continually isn’t receiving the message that the way they are running the company is burning bridges with its employees. At the same time, Amazon is getting away with the same thing, so who’s to say this kind of thing doesn’t work? Either way, for your health and the sanity of those around you, I do not recommend spending much time at this company.
To quote another employee’s recent review: “This is where you go to work to find out how you should NOT be treated.”
