Avantages
PTO Interesting work Like-minded colleagues – it’s unusual to find an entire company staffed by writers and editors. By the way, I wonder who got paid to write the positive reviews? ;)
Inconvénients
Sweatshop Mentality. This place clocks you for every minute of your day. Assignments are given in 15-minute increments, and expectations are unrealistic. I regularly worked through lunch and stayed late to even out my time sheet. Full-time “salaried” employees have to log 40 hours of billable work per week in order to be paid that salary. If there’s a shortage of work, you’ll be sent home and told to use your vacation time to make up the difference in hours. The office culture also suffers because people are working furiously with their heads down all day. Compensation. Pay is well below the standard for comparable work in Atlanta. Sadly, there’s no shortage of inexperienced English majors who will work for far less than they’re worth. Management is well aware of this fact and treats employees as dispensable. When employees began to question why their pay was so low, the owner assigned everyone new and completely obscure job titles. Then he held a company meeting where he accused everyone of comparing apples to oranges. Management. The “CEO” is painfully inept. In a nutshell, his management style is to regurgitate things he heard from Christian conservative demagogues, punish the group for individual transgressions, and constantly implement strange reactionary policies. He communicates in an ineffective, insensitive, and passive-aggressive manner. Then there are his pathetic efforts to entertain, which lead him to say things that just defy comprehension. During a meeting, he referred to a staff member who had recently lost two family members in rapid succession by laughing and saying, “I guess she got a two-fer!” Lack of Training. I was regularly assigned to projects that required knowledge of software I’d never used before. I wasn’t pleased with my own work, so I requested professional training. Instead, I got an hour of scattered tips from a co-worker who was completely self-taught. When our client complained that the work was subpar, the owner sat back and let his project team take the beating for the poor product anyway. The sales leads often oversold our in-house capabilities and set up employees and contractors for failure. Preferential Treatment. If you don’t chum it up with the boss, go to the same church, or play tennis with the right people, you won’t get very far here. Or you might get more responsibility, but you won’t get paid for it.