Pluspunten
Location: Conveniently located on the Plateau Mont-Royal, close to the mountain and to a ton of restaurant. A little walk from the Metro but close to the Orange Line or the Green Line. The view is astounding and is part of the sales pitch, both to new employees and new clients. The office is very nice and they offer you free drinks, coffees and fruits. Floor staff: The employees were great, fast learners that were happy to help you if you needed them. The team leads/heads were great with their team, very helpful. They went beyond the minimum to help their staff and their clients. We had a variety of professionals (marketing copywriters, SEO and PPC experts, UX designers, programmers) and they brought such a diverse discourse that it was interesting. Training: they did Lunch and Learn meeting often and it was interesting. Most were done by the staff. It would give you key insights and new point of views. However, upper staff were almost never involved, it was lower staff only.
Minpunten
I'll say it straight: nothing they promised during the hiring process actually happened. They say that they are one happy team but you understand quickly that there are two very distinct teams: the floor and the upper. They say that they'll give you a significant raise but it's quite the opposite. Open-door policy? There is nobody on the other side of the door to hear you. Team-building activities? The interesting ones were for the upper team only. Absent leadership: Top-level leadership are qualified but they are never present. And when I say never, it is never. They simply are not part of the iP team and it shows: they are more like Dentsu Aegis employee (the mother company) that shows up once in a while, they are way over you hierarchically and they want you to know it. When there is a crisis (and there has been several in the time I was there), they would show up, even sit with us for the appearances and disappear after a few hours. It seems they were always on vacations, on a retreat of focusing on some other new businesses that didn't involve the agency. Poor Management: The directors were under-qualified, were also often absent and were unable to manage crisis with employees or clients. Most directors have been named out of the blue from nowhere. Instead of opening the position, the bosses would simply name somebody with no real process. Middle-management is atrocious on all levels. Human Resources and Politics: HR gave us almost no raise, didn't replace the numerous seniors that left and when they did, they would hire interns. As a result, the pressure was enormous on the employees, the staff was more and more junior and the few qualified employees that stayed were incredibly cynical. They knew that management level job was unattainable, even if they were strongly qualified, and that they were probably better off as freelancer or at another company. To compensate, the company would give them low-level promotions as practice leads (or if they were very lucky, head). Everything felt incredibly politic and heavy, even if we were such a small team. Low Retention : Everybody who was somebody left. In the year I was there, we lost one or two employee per week. Most employees, like me, left within a year after we were hired. We lost all our best leaders and employees, the ones that made a difference. As soon as somebody was minimally qualified, he or she left. The word on the floor was quite clear: stay for a year, get some trainings and leave as soon as you can. Yet, management kept saying that everything was okay. Didn't make sense.