Pros
Cool Offices • Beer Fridays • Some Great and Knowledgeable Coworkers I had the opportunity to work with some very talented and knowledgeable people, most of whom didn’t stay very long. Initially after being hired, I had a lot of support and appreciation. Unfortunately, that ended fairly quickly when key people were let go in one of many layoffs.
Kontras
Shifting Focus and Priorities • Poor Morale • Personality, Not Performance, Driven • Chaotic • High Employee Turnover • Out-of-Touch Senior Management This isn’t a place to make a career or to stay long term. If you decide to work here, come, get the experience (or paycheck) you need, get out, and move on. Don’t stay more than a year, or two at most. Read and heed the other reviews, especially the negative ones. While I’m sure some people have had good experiences, most people I dealt with daily at Rauxa aligned far more with the negative. The agency is completely driven by sales, personality, and the bottom line – the owner is from a sales background, as are most key people in the agency. Everything else is of secondary concern, including employees. The exception being a small clique of senior management. They’re kind of like the cool kid’s table in high school, and the atmosphere feels very much like high school, or as another reviewer said, a college sorority. Image is another big deal – therefore, the cool offices, all the talk about wanting to be the best, caring for employees, and a deep concern for employee growth and retention. However, there’s no substance or follow up to the talk and glitter. Expect to stay late and work long, unappreciated hours with little or no notice. In other words, forget about your personal life. The only department with room for advancement is the Account Services department as they support the sales staff (VPs). With sales as the be-all and end-all of the agency, operations is an absolute nightmare. There is no project management other than for digital projects, and, most likely, only because it was inherited with the digital agency (ThoughtMatrix) Rauxa acquired a few years ago. While there are a ton of documented procedures, in the name of expediency, the bottom line, and to satisfy clients’ every whim and desire, they are the first thing thrown out the window. It’s highly chaotic. For most departments, it’s fly by the seat of your pants, and do whatever it takes to get the work out the door. Of course, the work and more suffers (see next paragraph). Morale among employees is, on the whole, horrible. The exceptions being Accounting and some Account Services people. Nearly all the key and senior people on the digital side, who came from the ThoughtMatrix acquisition, recently left. Only a shell of the digital group remains. They’re bleeding employees, which probably explains while, at the time of this writing, there are 50 open positions in a company of 200–250 people. It speaks volumes and isn’t because they’re growing. In fact, there are generally one to two major layoffs a year as management panics and reacts to shifting billable work, only to hire again a month or two later.