My experience at AKQA Tokyo
TL;DR — Don’t work at AKQA Tokyo.
I worked at AKQA Tokyo from Dec 2017 to August 2018. I originally didn’t plan on sharing this publicly — but after hearing the stories of the people still trapped there and the stories of others who left shortly after me, I feel compelled to share why I left.
A quick overview: I was originally transferred from the Portland office with a contract that should have lasted two years but instead lasted only nine months. The office is small — there were less than 30 people working there during my tenure, with much turnover. Business is conducted in English and the employees are primarily Japanese with a handful of expats.
At the time, they had about four main clients. Several of the projects for those clients were taking existing global work and producing it for the Japanese market (read: no creative input). When we were allowed creativity, the timelines we were given were rushed and never seemed to allow for the best work to come through. This was pretty obvious from the start — however surprisingly, has nothing to do with why I decided to leave.
A solid work culture can pretty much bridge the gap for me when it comes to shitty work and uninspiring projects. But instead, here’s a summary of what you can expect to find at AKQA Tokyo:
- An ineffective leadership panel comprised of: a tyrannical Creative Director that is too young, too immature, and too inexperienced to lead,
- a Delivery Manager who ignores the truth, blows smoke, and works the best employees to the bone in order to make up for her complete lack of ability,
- and a Managing Director with no back bone who abandons reason in favor of taking the advice from the other two I just mentioned.
Early into the Creative Director being hired, I stayed in the office alone until 2am working on a pitch with very little direction from him aside from, “make it VR.” Every idea he had — when he had them — was off brief, recycled from his previous jobs, or taken from a different campaign. Every single time he would try to force a Gameshow idea like a tourist trying to fit into corporate Japan. He never showed any respect for Japanese culture nor tried to listen to ideas that tapped into it. It was impossible to take him seriously and because of that, every creative was forced to fend for themselves.
Then, he started bringing interns into the office, saying “don’t rely on them too much, they probably won’t be any good,” yet he assigned them projects for the highest-paying clients. I sat across from him in meetings where he stood up and yelled at me for asking a simple question. When he was forced to apologize, he instead just told me I was unprofessional. He would constantly tear people down whenever his reputation was on the line.
If I spoke up about something and leadership agreed, I was thanked for “being so American” and “bringing a fresh perspective” to the office. If I spoke up about something and they disagreed, I was being “too western” and reminded that “this is Japan” and “not how things work.”
If a project went well, the CD was rewarded, with few (if any) accolades given to his team. If it went poorly, the team was to blame with no accountability held to the CD. The hypocrisy ran rampant and ruined the working lives of those at the bottom — all to cover the leadership’s inability to steer the ship. Overtime was the norm and typically due to poor management.
When I shared my concerns, the Managing Director told me “how strange” it was to hear what I had to say because “that’s not what [the creative director] said in his interviews.” This same Managing Director had hired the CD in isolation — with no input from senior creatives who could have spotted this disaster before it was too late.
When things got really toxic, it only took about three weeks before I received an email titled “Performance Improvement Request” from the Managing Director. When we were scheduled to meet about it, he walked in 10 minutes late, chewing his lunch — with the Creative Director and the Delivery Manager by his side — while he casually told me I was “drastically underperforming.” (I should also mention that only a month before this email, I had gotten a pay increase for being “vital to culture” and “over performing.”)
Instead of going into details in person, he handed me a letter with 26 bullet points (mostly duplicates with different wording) of generic tasks pulled from job descriptions. When I asked for specifics on how I was underperforming, none of them could say. Finally, the only feedback they had was that I “complained about Google Slides,” after the Managing Director yelled “you’re just underperforming, okay?”
After the meeting, I composed a written response to counter the bullet points. I asked to meet again to discuss the points and counterpoints, to which they never responded.
Ultimately, Human Resources was my champion. They were CC’d in the emails and pulled me aside one day to see if I was okay, and that what they had been reading “didn’t feel quite right.” They worked out that I could end my contract early without repercussion.
So, here I am, sharing this because I’ve had many previous coworkers reach out to me and apologize on behalf of their bosses. I was punished for being the first to call everything out — which I’m proud to say led to a much better position at a much better company.
Since I’ve been gone, I’ve had multiple people tell me that the Creative Director went around the office bragging about telling other AKQA offices not to hire me.
To be across the ocean from that office and still hear stories about how the leadership team continues to torment their employees has made me want to be clear: this office will never be successful as long as you have incapable, dishonest people at the helm.
PS — This is specific to AKQA’s office in Tokyo, Japan and doesn’t necessarily reflect the other offices. This was originally posted on Linkedin.
