Pros
I always said while I was at TR that there was a certain type of person who would love to work there. If you don't have many responsibilities outside of the office, you aren't interested in saving money for future plans, and just want to hang out listening to excruciatingly loud euro-pop all day, this is the place for you! Travel credits mean (or meant, pre-pandemic) that you can travel the world for a fraction of the cost or for free, and it's actively encouraged by management. There are a TON of office activities. If the idea of your manager showing up dead-to-the-world hungover on a Wednesday morning sounds hilarious to you, you'll love it.
Cons
If you AREN'T one of those people -- if you're looking for job stability, if you enjoy having a life outside of your job, or if you're planning for the future, there's not much good to say about TR. If you find people who are just as disenchanted with the office as you are, it's manageable. In my time at TR, I saw: Racist remarks by management and upper management that were swept under the rug. POC employees were pressured to accept apologies and made to feel like they were being "difficult" if they were still uncomfortable working with those people. I personally witnessed an executive-level manager use an LGBT-specific slur before catching himself. The context of the discussion was TR's participation in Toronto's Pride parade. Meetings were had to address employees working while actively drunk because drinking was such a part of the culture ("one or two beers at lunch is fine, but stop sitting and pounding them back alone"). At least once a week sales would have to BEG other employees to turn the music that blares 24/7 down. Wouldn't you love to book a $10,000 tour when the person selling to you has the lonely island pounding through the phone? Sudden layoffs that were announced in front of the entire company. The people being laid-off found out at the meeting, and we'd been promised zero lay-offs for months before. Upper management, including the CMO at the time, made explicit jokes about employees' sex lives at company-wide meetings. An employee had to take a year-long mental health sabbatical because of the workload and treatment he received during a failed marketing campaign. The phrase "if you're just here to come into work, do a really great job, and then leave, this isn't the job for you." We literally made it to the front page of World Star Hip-Hop because an employee IMPALED himself during a company event. He was fine, but employees were blamed for spreading it. Management took no responsibility for the fact that it happened in the first place. Less of a big deal, but employees in the Vienna office get 28 days paid vacation, but Toronto employees were told we were "lucky" to get 15, "because we don't actually HAVE to give you that many." After-work staff parties that caused unbelievable property damage. I'm talking toilet seats ripped off, vomit in the stairwells, holes in the walls. The bottom line is that appearance is everything to TR. They're absolutely desperate to become one of those super-cool start-ups, but they don't have enough skill to scale and enough brains to understand that the reason people are happy at those other companies is because they're being fairly compensated and respected for their time.
