toxic work environment - werkgeversreview Storyboard Artist bij Rough Draft Studios

This is asking too many questions

None of your business friend

Good pay, catered lunch once a week, projects are OK. Like any place, some nice people work here, and some others that put you on edge or are passive aggressive. Regular internal screenings are cool, but there is a worship-like atmosphere lacking humility where you are expected to give standing ovations to the directors, creating a somewhat aloof echo-chamber of self-congratulation. They truly believe they are the best in the business.

Supervisors are at times passive aggressive or introverted, sometimes lacking the fortitude to communicate issues affecting production. Hands-off approach, sometimes taking long periods of time to approve assets or shots. Streams of hostile left-wing political rants pontificated out loud throughout the day by senior staff make for a negative, toxic environment at times. Producers also distribute left-wing progressive voting guides before election days, and post political petitions for woke causes in common areas for employees to sign. Not sure if this is legal - it's at least inappropriate. Those not in political/ideological lockstep with management might want to keep quiet to avoid backlash or drama and protect their employment status. But be prepared to weather frequent one-sided politics at work. Dogs are allowed here, which is OK if the dogs are friendly, however, they freely roam the building off-leash. One director would bring a pitbull, which liked to follow me to the restroom and growl at me, causing me to fear for my safety. I mentioned this to management, but the dog was allowed to stay. However, one of the other directors was later bitten by this dog at work. So, please exercise caution if you decide to work here. Frequent communications are handled through a loud building-wide intercom, creating a distracting cacophony of every behind-the-scenes minutia, however irrelevant to your own job, often breaking your concentration and focus. Multiple directors on a single show will often separately give you opposing directions, resulting in your re-doing work, because you mistakenly assume they have actually communicated with each other. Rough Draft operates in the technological Dark Ages: no pipeline, digital toolsets or file management utilities, not even a chat client to communicate with people on a different level of the building... and they seem perfectly content this way. All file management is done excruciatingly by hand. If you work here, be prepared to spend lots of personal time at home keeping up with current trends, software, technology and workflows, because this is a studio where those skills go to die. Their process and computer hardware works for their purposes, but is stuck in the early 90s, and they are either very slow, reluctant or defiant to catch up, modernize or invest in tools which make production better, faster and easier.