Pros
The lower-to-mid-level copywriters are the best part about this place. They are all wonderful, talented people who have each other's backs. You'll get good experience writing marketing collateral for a wide range of businesses and industries, which will help you get a much better job somewhere else.
Cons
- Copywriters here get paid way below the industry average. - The workload you are expected to plow through is excessive. The CEO underprices projects to the point that she expects you to turn around finished work in unrealistic timeframes. You basically get treated like a machine that just churns out content. - Like many small businesses, employees have to "wear a lot of hats." At MarketSmiths, this means you will do enough work for three jobs, but only get paid for one. - Management will tell you that can't pay you a market-rate salary because the company is too small and then turn around and brag about making a list of the fastest-growing companies in America. - The CEO will sign anyone on as a client without doing much vetting, so you'll work with shady clients, disorganized clients, clients with unrealistic expectations, and small businesses and entrepreneurs who will monopolize your time because they are too close to the project. - The CEO is a workaholic who will openly mention to staff that she works 15-hour days. The implication being that she expects the same level of dedication from the rest of us. - The CEO will just casually describe things as "r*t*rded." You'd figure that someone who founded a company with the tagline "Copywriting for Humans" would know that this stopped being OK decades ago. -The CEO demands constant praise and displays of gratitude from her subordinates and will quietly complain to other staffers when she doesn't receive kudos she thinks she is owed. As if working here isn't stressful enough without the added responsibility of propping up the founder's fragile ego. -As someone in another review mentioned, the CEO is close to the business to a detriment. So she takes any and all well-meaning, constructive criticism personally. - In almost every call or meeting I've had with the CEO, she managed to say someone petty, cruel, or mean-spirited about another staffer. These comments were unsolicited and all they did was make me wonder what she said behind my back to my colleagues. This was ironic as she had an obsession with the notion that staffers were talking behind her back, like venting about your boss to your colleagues is the worst betrayal imaginable and not something workers have done since the beginning of time. Perhaps her staff would feel more comfortable speaking to the CEO directly if it didn't feel like walking into a firing squad every time she solicited feedback. - There was a clause in my employment contract stating that staffers weren't allowed to discuss pay rates with each other and would be subject to disciplinary action if caught, which is completely illegal. - You won't get much PTO and if you quit before you can use it all, they won't pay it out. - The health insurance doesn't cover anything and barely anyone takes it. - This is just a terrible place to work, hands down. People burn out a lot. I did.