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      Blue 449

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      Blue 449 Reviews

      3.1

      44% would recommend to a friend

      (126 total reviews)
      avatar

      Chris Boothe

      61% approve of CEO

      22% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.4

      Diversity and inclusion

      3.1

      Culture and values

      3.1

      Work/Life balance

      3.0

      Compensation and benefits

      3.0

      Career opportunities

      2.9

      Senior management

      Blue 449 has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 126 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Blue 449 employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      126 reviews
      2.0
      19 Sept 2018

      Good agency years ago that has gone down hill

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Part of Publicis Groupe so there's a lot of resources that you might not have at a smaller agency - Working on such a large client like T-Mobile is great experience and you have budgets that you can do cool things with - Has a young culture (it wasn't always this way) which can be a good or a bad thing depending on where you're at in your life. It can be a little cliquey and now that there are more transplants in Seattle, a lot of people are close friends outside of work. Depending on how you like to keep your work/life either separate or intertwined this can be a positive or negative. - Good vacation package and generous holiday schedule

      Cons

      - Management likes to pretend they are transparent by saying "we want to be transparent with you" but that's as far as their so called transparency goes. The T-Mobile account was under review yet people only found this out through rumors. They eventually addressed this by saying there was nothing to worry about and we were in a good spot in the RFP process. Crickets for months and what do you know, an announcement comes out that TMO is taking a majority of their media business in house. Shocker. - In the same vein, many people at the executive level were quietly making their exit and remaining management didn't acknowledge this. One SVP left, never outright announced she was leaving, never said goodbye to anyone and couldn't even be bothered to send an email saying bye. In my opinion, unacceptable for someone in a leadership position. - No backbone with the client, lets client walk all over and are willing to abuse employees to make clients happy because they can't afford to lose their only client... guess what, they still did - Work life balance is probably great now that they're losing most of the business, but at its peak teams were regularly there til 8/9 at night and one team had to be on call every weekend.. no extra compensation for this - Can't win new business. They've been "pitching" new business since I started there 6 years ago and have won zero unless you count metro pcs and the hispanic tmobile business, which really doesn't count because it's ultimately still tmobile. - Takes forever to get a promotion, except for in the past year where they've been rapidly promoting people who probably actually have no business being promoted, just because they've been desperate to keep people and people are going in and threatening to quit. They had to bribe a group with a bonus if they stayed through the end of summer just because they couldn't afford to lose more people. - Pay is low and benefits are subpar. The only thing they have going for them is vacation/holidays. The Seattle market has changed rapidly in the past 5 years with Amazon and tech companies coming in which offer extremely competitive pay or benefits (in most cases both) and the agency simply hasn't adjusted to this. - At the core, I just felt like this company did not truly value me or my hard work as an employee and that becomes a very toxic and resentful environment to work in. Whenever promotions came about, I usually had to fight for them or throw a fit. Whenever minimal raises came about, it always came with a "you should feel lucky because not everyone got one"... how about, great job you earned this?

      avatar
      Blue 449 Response
      7y
      We are disappointed to hear your experience with the company was not all you expected. It is our goal to provide a positive environment to all our employees and take seriously when we hear that we have failed anyone. The retention of T-Mobile, and the lion share of their business, was a strong endorsement of the value Blue 449 provide our clients. And, we fully support their initiatives to develop in-house capabilities against the deliverables we did not retain. We’d welcome time with you to review your concerns so we can address our continued support of our Blue 449 family.
      1.0
      12 Aug 2015

      Do it for 6 months to a year for resume credentials, then get OUT.

      Assistant media planner
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      -They'll hire you without experience which is hard to come by these days when you're starting in any industry -LOT of networking possibilities. You can easily foster connections for future employment prospects. But everyone knows everyone. News travels fast and lasts forever so guard your reputation like it's the Hope Diamond. -Free coffee and sometimes free food, etc. Occasional nice perks (but they definitely are not worth it). -Those who are genuinely good people are really awesome, kind, and will help you if you ask. But they are few and far between.

      Cons

      In my opinion none of the perks are worth working here unless you are severely hard-up for a job. -Definitely underpaid both for the industry, this city, and the amount of work that you put in. Do the math for how much it comes out to per hour for all the crazy hours you put in. I've been paid more when I was working in a cafe. -Many people -including higher ups- are extremely catty and will not hesitate to throw you under the bus if it means making themselves look good. Extremely two-faced. You'll have no idea that people are bad-mouthing - often saying things that are most certainly not true - until someone lets it slip what they heard about you. Don't say anything that you wouldn't be okay with everyone knowing. This is not an exaggeration. -You will most certainly be overworked for reasons that could and should be avoidable. So many systemic issues from the top down that result in people staying at the office insanely late. They keep staffing the largest teams while telling the smallest teams there's no budget to hire on. Meanwhile those on the smaller teams are criticized for working too many hours when they have just as much work, if not more so, than the other larger teams. -RIDICULOUS EXPECTATIONS!! For example - There were several times we were told to go to a mandatory happy hour or some other social event with a vendor or a client. We'd be ordered to pack up by 3pm, but deadlines wouldn't be adjusted and things sometimes were due that day or early the next morning. If you tried to stay and work instead, you'd get in trouble. -I hope you're comfortable with your eating habits because everything you put in your mouth WILL get commented on. -RAMPANT favoritism. -Unethical bullying. These examples don't even scratch the surface of this place. Hands down, the most toxic environment I've ever worked in. More middle-school like than my own middle-school experience ever was.

      avatar
      Blue 449 Response
      9y
      I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such a negative experience with us, it is always the goal of our HR teams to support and encourage our employees at all levels in all offices. We understand your concerns about poor compensation, although we do offer very competitive compensation packages to all employees with various additional benefits including commuter support, paid leave for new parents (including adoptive parents), and paid time off that exceeds the industry average including sick days, a day for moving, and family time. In addition to salary, these benefits (and others) along with in-office perks and various events make our compensation packages desirable. HR regularly assess employee timesheets to ensure that our employees are not overworked and encourage all employees to speak up if they feel they are struggling with workload. Our leadership teams are continually supporting the needs of employees to promote a healthy work-life balance. We also recognize that there have been difficult employee situations in the past, but in recent years, we have provided increased training to our leadership and employee base and have increased our human resources team to better support the needs of employees and build a more positive and encouraging culture and environment. While some of our teams are constrained by the budgets of the clients we serve, we do our best to make sure that we do not over commit our teams to projects and tasks they cannot reasonably manage. We ask that any employee who is feeling overextended in this way speak to their manager, office leadership or HR with their concerns so workloads can be reallocated equally and our employees do not suffer. Again, I am very sorry to hear of your experience, but we hope that your career has been successful. Thank you for your review.
      1.0
      10 Jul 2019

      Underpaid with no training

      Assistant
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      - Free food - Some nice people - Great PTO - Nice office

      Cons

      - Mean-spirited upper management - No training, you're just expected to know how to do complex tasks - Severely underpaid - No upward mobility, they don't like promoting people - Toxic people, lots of gossip and office politics - Mindless work, the work you do is not transferrable to other jobs and is just mindless grunt work

      Viewing 1 - 3 of 126 Reviews
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      Glassdoor has 138 Blue 449 reviews submitted anonymously by Blue 449 employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Blue 449 is right for you.