I saw a lot of people that were stagnant in their positions- and they were all fine with it. Most of lower/ middle mgmt stay the same, with not much movement, if any, for years- and they all seem fine with it because benefits are great and pay is good- but I rarely saw any ambition other than in upper upper management. All lowest level employees are a revolving set of "freelancers" (full time hours, 5 days a week, every week, just no benefits). Theres not much in terms talent cultivation or retention for those starting out in the industry. The setup ensures that the salaried employees right above them feel no need to stay competitive for their jobs as theres no risk of the people below them being promoted. "Freelancers" have a limit to how many hours they can work at A+E (comes out to approx 1.5-2 years working full time hours), and then by law they are not allowed to work there for the next two years. Basically, they train someone to do the job, give them just enough time to get to know everything about the ins and outs of the department, company and learn how to work well with people who run them....and then they find someone else to start the entire process again. This would be acceptable if it were one or two people per department, but this department alone at one time had up to 18 of these permalancers out of the department total of about 50. The department had 9 "expiring" people in a 3 month span, that meant 9 new people sprinkled in over just a couple months, some trained properly and some not. It was said that they do this excessive freelancer business partly because freelancers do not factor in to the head count when calculating profit- basically, on paper, it looks like they are getting a hell of a lot of work done, with not many people.
