Great Breadth of Clients, Difficult to Grow - Assistant Account Manager BIG FISH PR Employee Review

Throughout the years I was at BIGfish, it was extremely difficult to get concrete, metric-based feedback about growth. During reviews or 1:1s, it was typical to receive positive reinforcement, but when inquiring about what I could do to get to the next level, the feedback was vague and it was unclear what my manager considered 'success' to get to the next position. For a long time, it was the norm at BIGfish for promotions to be far and few between - and this was widely accepted because for many employees, we were fresh out of college in our first full time roles, just happy to be there. It came later for many of us that we realized our professional growth had been stunted, especially when looking at how other PR agencies promote from within more consistently. Whether it was intentional to keep us doing more work / going above and beyond for little pay or just outdated thinking from a management perspective, looking back on it, I feel we were all taken advantage of. Additionally, it was abundantly clear management valued clients over employees - whether it was outlandish requests that had us working on holidays consistently or general distaste with a client organization, it didn't matter so long as the client paid us our retainer. BIGfish promotes a "family" environment and makes you feel you're cared for, but that's not the case based on lack of growth/compensation/client over employee outlook.