Complaint Review: Top Pro Media Group - Boca Raton Florida

The co-owners of the business created a very hostile work environment, often yelling at employees for setbacks that were usually their own fault from poor management of time and resources. There was often a demand for fitting internal projects into the design, development and marketing queues due to the constant reasoning of needing more money to sustain the business, which is hard to believe considering the amount of revenue that would continually be brought in each month had they properly managed clients and realistically handled their needs.

New clients were brought into the mix without any real consideration of the current workflow and time availability, and the employees were the ones blamed and mistreated when work could not be completed within the unrealistic timelines due to stacking projects on top of each other.

The staff consisted of one full-time designer, one full-time web developer, two account managers (expected to manage the needs of multiple clients each each week), an office manager, and three executive members at the time of my departure. However, there were 15-20 clients actively being managed with 2-4 new clients added each month. Due to the amount of work needed for just one client in a design and development stage, it was impossible to balance the amount of time needed for all clients with such a small amount of staff members. This led to many clients having their deposit or monthly payment processed and being assured that their needs were being addressed, without having even touched their project.

When clients were dissatisfied and wanted to leave, they would be forced to follow a contractual agreement to stay with the company for an opt-out period of 30-60 days (90 days for partnerships) where they would still be obligated to pay any monthly fees (often between $2000-$5000 per month) even if nothing substantial had been accomplished to justify the expense. There was an incident where a client left without notifying the company of their severance or paying their invoice yet, and the co-owner instructed the development team to illegally and intentionally sabotage the website on its new hosting provider.

The owners were not transparent at all with the department directors as to what clients were joining, leaving or needing higher priority in advanced, nor was there a department budget provided to allow directors to make purchases for materials crucial for project completion. The owners were constantly out of office on business trips or vacations (3 vacations this year alone) and did not trust directors to make purchases, often leaving them and myself to delay a project's progression until approval and purchase confirmation was received.

The biggest problem within the company is that micro-management was enforced on every individual. Department directors were incapable of managing their staff and workflow, making their positions and titles pointless. The executive team dictated what, when and how work would be done, without the experience to justify those decisions, creating a high-stress environment where every employee was more concerned about avoiding confrontations with the owners, rather than executing their passion within their work to increase productivity.

The business when I left was very unstable, due to clients and employees leaving (usually 1-2 clients and one employee per month) from unsatisfactory conditions. My reasoning for departure, other than it being a hostile work environment, was that I could no longer deal with the constant lies to employees, clients and myself. Most of the promises made to me for growth of position, involvement and salary within the company in exchange for relocating was not delivered, only addressed with more lies and double talk. I myself, as well as most of the other employees were grossly underpaid, earning between 35%-50% LESS than the market average for that job position. That, in conjunction with no health benefits left me with no reason to continue my employment, and is why I am advising anyone interested in working with or for this company to keep looking.