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Carat NYC is open office. People are generally nice. Clients are OK, you will most likely be busy with most of the clients and that should be a good sign. Culture is not bad among lower end of the ladder. Very cliquey though and you'll most likely be bound to your team and other teams you collaborate with. Right now very high turn over (and I think it's not over yet). Raises and promotions are for people in upper management only. DISCLAIMER: Carat pays below industry low average for people below VP level I think (confirmed by their own HR people, yes more than one person from HR confirmed). It's not how it was like two to three years ago in terms of culture and atmosphere. A lot of major talent gone, if not all. No transparency or any thought leadership from management. They just think you're an idiot and immediately knows what to do. They haven't win any new business in nearly a year or more, I think. Of course this is all my personal opinion after three plus years. I think leadership is very shitty right now and it's a club for people to just hold titles and get high pay and do bare minimum work (not all of leadership but great majority). You will see the nightly janitor more than leadership in a week, every week. If you want to work here, ask for above industry average pay and good luck. Damn it, I didn't intend to write this much. I guess I really need to leave this piece of shit burning hellhole. I strongly dislike Carat.
You might be right. I might be in denial - Carat used to have the lowest industry turnover
Another thing I want to stress is morale overall is not high. You really have to play favorites or be in "the clique" to get bumps and promotions.
Correction: Open floor plan, not open office. Carat sucks, don't go there unless you're an assistant and want to learn the ropes of this industry. Learning from the shittiest will help you know what's the best for you.
I love Carat, but had left and came back so I'm still assessing the differences between now and then. Can understand the point above about leadership, but I think that any agency actively winning (like we did a few years back) vs staying level will go through that. Agree with the pay raise point. I do like the general atmosphere though - far better than other agencies/sweatshops I've been at, and sales reps tend to agree.
What they said..spent four fucking years at Carat. Not once did I feel valued. Learned a lot though, but leaderships really is fucking shitty, esp on the operations side.
You referring to Murnick or Hannan? Either way 4 years is fucking a lot, dealing with all their politics and bullshit excuses only to get slapped in the face with more bullshit. That's how I feel right now with Carat.
How about benefits and PTO? What are the good client teams?
Basic benefits. 2 weeks pto year 1 and 3 weeks starting year 2 and onwards. L I'm guessing you're going to be a planner. No idea what client teams are good anymore since everyone is paid shit.
Let's just say I'm familiar with both...
On the plus side for low achievers: it's near impossible to get fired. HR and management drag their feet so much it's ridiculous
They only do exit interviews for people they think matters or they are mid senior level people. They are right to not do exit interviews anyway because everyone here sucks. All the good people are gone.
It depends on what team but I agree on the fact about how hr and management drags their feet on everything. All I know is you will never be valued and you will always be viewed as dispensable and stupid. Management says so much shit that they think junior employees don't know how to tell they're bullshitting. Worst is when you catch them conflicting with someone else in management.
They didn't even bother to schedule an exit interview with me and my manager wasn't even there for my last day. Oh the memories...
How is the experience for directors and above?
I think there’s obviously some anger in this thread, and unfortunately, not all the things covered here are accurate. Carat has 4 weeks holiday as standard (to my knowledge) also has one of the best equal maternity/paternity leave policies in the industry at 4 months with the option to tack on your vacation to that too, taking it to 5 months. There’s been a flurry of new business wins across the NY and LA offices including some massive retention (MSFT) and organic growth from winning further business from P&G as well as many other wins including Intel, United, Phillips etc. I understand people’s frustrations with an agency, but it’s important to understand that there may be many reasons things don’t work out for individuals. We see a really high rate of people leaving and choosing to come back to Carat due to the people and culture, so am totally respectful of people’s opinion here, but there is a larger perspective at hand too