Letter to past Employer

This letter was sent to my last employer. I sent it feeling a sense of obligation to
the employees left behind. The names have been changed to protect their identities. It was an effort to open the owners eye's to a quickly sinking ship that is his company, www.sjp.com.


Dear Brad,

I have now been out of SJ&P for two months now. I currently have
a new job with the Navy that is going to be good for me. I'm going
to be getting some new training, working with new technologies that
will help me in the future.

I have been wanting to write you since my resignation but thought it best to wait a while to depressurize so I could have an unclouded opinion to pass on to you.

I do feel like it is my responsibility to write you. You were always good to me. You treated me with respect and courtesy during the few conversations we had in passing.

Now to be honest and frank, Dan libich (The Creative Director) is killing your creative department. Everyone there has to wait for days for his approval on anything. He never keeps his scheduled meetings with others. He can not be counted on to give a quick and decisive opinion so that the product can get out the door.

And to be honest, the current Cloudyline brand is not a brand at all. There is no concept. The work that he is doing is subpar. A lifestyle shot and some big blocky white copy is not a a brand. It is identical to a Visa campaign done recently. He has managed to take all of the concepts that his creative team sweated over for months and reduce it to that. Something is wrong with the whole creative process.

Also, often I would wait outside his office for up to or over an hour for him while he talked on the phone. He was blowing me off knowing that I was sitting outside waiting on a scheduled meeting. And he does this to everyone down there. Everyone, I mean everyone in the creative department can not depend on him. And believe me a lot of folks are looking to leave the agency because of him. If they were all willing to relocate there would be only a handful of people left in that department.

In my exit interview he said that if this company doesn't step up to the plate with new technologies, and fresh ideas that it would be out of business in a year. I want you to know that if he can't be depended on to keep a meeting and make a decision about a simple yes or no question he most definitely will not be able to help with any new technologies or fresh ideas.

Also, Ted Smith is not a technical person and should not be in charge of the interactive department. Ted is a great guy and is punctual and dependable, but his decision making is not going to help lead the interactive department. It will only allow it to stagnate. You guys will need to hire a programmer if you plan on going anywhere with that technology. To outsource and pay up to 100 dollars an hour for programming can not be productive.

You will need to improve your web presence. Instantly. SJ&P needs a new web site, yesterday. I know for a fact as a job seeker myslef I judge companies on their web site. If I was looking to relocate to a smaller city to work for a smaller agency, and I went to www.sjp.com, I would not consider it for a second.

The site needs to be designed by a web designer. It should be given over to one or two people. There are way to many cooks in the kitchen. That's why decisions can't be made on it. Also the web design should be done by web designers. Print design is a different world from web design. Dan does not understand this.

If you want the interactive department to prosper and to bring in new business you will need to get rid of Ted at his current position and put him in an admin. position. Then get in a young interactive designer / programmer fresh out of school, and pay him half as much as Ted. He or she will bring in cutting edge ideas and the technical background to back them up.

You can take this advice or leave it. I felt like I owed it to you, since you seemed like a really nice person and always treated me with respect. Dan does not do the same. He needs to follow your lead on that.

I really hope you guys turn things around, because if not, like Dan said in a year you won't be around, or at least will lose one of your bigger clients. I hope not for the sake of the good folks who depend on that paycheck for their mortgages and families.


Thanks for the kindness and courtesy in which you treat everyone. Please keep it up.


Sincerely,

Byron King
www.byronkingdesign.com