Common Thread Collective reviews

Terrible work-life balance - CTC stresses 'respect the rest' as part of one of its major values but their actions say otherwise. Many employees here work until late evenings and throughout weekends, especially if you are on a growth team / client-facing. I have known many people here that consistently work weekends just to appease clients and act as a bandaid for CTC's staffing issue. Don't join the company unless you're willing to trade your personal life away. Layoffs - Layoffs have been rampant here in 2022. They've laid off 20+ employees and plan to lay off more in the coming weeks. You can see the most recent reviews stating this too. Candidates and employees are lured in by the false promises of great culture and values, but this is used to distract them from the chaos and restructuring of the business due to poor financial planning and projections from the exec team. Something similar happened in 2019 and it looks like history has repeated itself... Churn - This not only refers to client churn but also employee churn. Their biggest clients have left them now due to the constant org restructuring, unqualified management, and undertrained employees. New clients are promised unrealistic expectations from the sales team, growth teams are not able to achieve these unattainable goals, clients get disappointed and blame it on the growth team, ultimately leading to immense stress on both sides and client/employee churn. Not only have they been laying people off, but many of the talented people here have left due to all of the reasons stated in this Cons section. Do you really want to work for a company that is currently going through layoffs and heavy client and employee churn? Unqualified management - People are promoted to management here simply because they've been at the company for a long time. Many of them have never ran an ad account or worked as a creative strategist, yet they're upper management in these departments. Management tends to be all talk and can't actually help you when you need it. Instead, they mumble jargon and constantly gaslight you for mistakes that are out of your control. Also, they recently hired for a whole bunch of new VP roles from the outside as part of their org restructure. Who knows? Maybe the money saved from the 20+ layoffs was worth it to support a few highly paid VPs that will wave a magic wand. Toxic culture - Another reviewer mentioned "cult" as a way to describe CTC and I completely agree. This starts from the top as the CEO puts himself on a pedestal. He comes across as arrogant, condescending, and extremely opinionated. This leaves no room for others to have the space to offer feedback or ask questions out of fear. Whether or not this is his intention, it is what is perceived. CTC tries to use its 'fun' and 'positive' culture/values to distract you from all its major issues mentioned above. There is a lot of finger pointing for mistakes and client relation issues - management will gaslight you into thinking something is your fault even when it isn't just to have a scapegoat. The culture has become more toxic and cut throat since the beginning of this year. CTC has sold its soul for corporate enterprise clients at the expense of its employees and SMBs. Get ready to be a cog in a broken machine well beyond repair.

MANAGEMENT! 90% of the management is unqualified to do their jobs. The company has people in positions of leadership that would NEVER succeed in the role of those they manage. Paid media has leadership that's never managed an ad account, creatives have leadership that can't discern between a good/bad ad, the NY extension is led by someone who's never excelled at any role they've been in, and the company has people making processes around project management but no one actually has formal project management training. Besides the lack of technical skills, most of the management also lacks people skills. The company may pride itself on transparency and feedback, but that's as good as trying to water your lawn behind a glass wall. You can see exactly what's going on the other side, but the moment you try to do something about it, the water just splashes back on you. They always ask for feedback but don't really do anything about it and when you try to give managers "managing up moments," they get defensive and make excuses. So many people actually feel uncomfortable giving their managers unfiltered feedback because they feel that nothing will change and it will only paint them in a negative light to their managers. You'll be stressed and overworked if you are a media buyer or team lead. These are the people who are responsible for generating revenue for the clients and they take the most heat. If something goes wrong, all fingers point to either or both of those positions. You'll only get celebrated if upper management likes you or if you have a fragile personality, then management will make sure that even if you took a dump in the wrong place, you get props for finally learning how to poop on your own. The internal company structure is absolute chaos. Every department points fingers at each other for who is responsible for what, but somehow only the team leads and buyers are responsible for revenue. The creative department is unorganized, lackluster, and is the same poorly run cycle regardless of how many times it's been restructured. Lastly, if you are extremely sensitive about discussing social issues, then this isn't the place for you. The company really prides itself on having women in management, whether they deserve to be there or not. It definitely leans left. If you don't want to share your dreams or dig deep into your soul, then this definitely isn't the place for you. It's mandatory for everyone to participate in a dream program and share with the company AND it's one of your kpis.