Pros
It can be a casual environment, especially if your manager is remote. Network/Friends - People are under so much stress, that you can bond really closely. A lot of people move to NY, and you’ll feel like you made friends fast. Then when your friends leave OUP, you now have a great network. We help each other get out, and it’s very common for former OUP employees to continue working together at other companies. Honestly this was my strategy coming in, and it worked. But it doesn’t work for everyone. *caveat: turnover is so high that some people don’t bother getting to know the new assistants. They’ll be gone in 6-11 months, and it’s exhausting. The Oxford brand - it sounds impressive on your resume, especially if you want to work at a smaller academic press or in education. If you want to work in publishing, there can be barriers transitioning from academic/higher ed to trade books. In those cases, people usually take an assistant level job at a different publisher (often a step down if they’ve been promoted at OUP), but some end up really happy at their subsequent company. Publishing knows how crappy OUP is, and they know people at OUP know how to work hard. In Summer 2019, a few of the most infamous sexual harassers/managers were let go (which in itself was a miracle because assistants had been reporting them for 20 years). It’s a weird culture because it feels like almost all of of the assistants are young women and almost all of the editors/managers are middle aged men. Although there are women in middle management, the men hold the authority. Some people like it at OUP. If you figure out how to emotionally detach, compartmentalize, and protect your personal time, you’ll be fine. Bagel Friday - although they’ve been cutting back on this recently to save money, which is concerning. Brown bananas aren’t healthy, they’re just cheap. They never got enough bagels in the first place - they’re gone by 9:15. Work somewhere else, and afford your own bagels.
Cons
Salary is unlivable in NYC. No one can do it without support from their parents or spouse, or a second job. This makes diversity impossible. Terrible health care. They’ll say they have tuition reimbursement, but they won’t give it to you. Layoffs - you might be next. The 60 people laid off this week have more time to pack their things, but usually people are forced out in the same work day that they get the news. Then their work is dumped on people who are kept. Hiring freezes - turnover is high, people leave all the time. And spanning months, the company has hiring freezes, where they refused to fill these empty positions. Their workload gets dumped on the remaining team. Everyone at OUP is juggling 2 full time workloads, at a minimum. Even when there’s not a hiring freeze, they’re EXTREMELY slow to hire mid and upper level positions. It’s 8-12 months of an assistant doing the work of their former manager or director, with no compensation in title or salary. I’ve heard sometimes they’ll give one $500 bonus, which after tax, isn’t nearly proportional to the workload. An assistant’s experience is entirely dictated by their manager. A few managers are wonderful, but they don’t tend to stick around long because they’re actually capable of getting out. Often they are forced out because they know they’re overworked and doing a good job, so they’ll ask for a raise/promotion, and they won’t get it. Then they leave, and the assistant is stuck doing both jobs. The bad managers get stuck there, and for some bizarre reason upper management seems hell bent on keeping the worst offenders. Experiences can vary, but expect to be yelled at, belittled, and thrown under the bus. No one is taught how to do anything, and then you get yelled at when the work lacks very ridged specifications. Less common: harassment. Most situations toe that line of “is this worth reporting?” and then “will there be repercussions if I do report?”. In the past, reporting assistants had been fired or shuffled to a different manager with nothing happening to the offending manager. Recently that’s been changing (see the pro for more details), but you will need multiple witnesses. I think the most common issue is general nastiness and incompetence at the mid/upper-level. Performance plans - less common, used as a tool to set impossible standards for a single employee, and then fire that person when these “expectations” aren’t met, after a boss has decided he doesn’t like the employee. I’ve seen this happen to both assistants and managers. Frustrating that they kept people who are much less competent than the employees they fired. Depending on the department, it can feel nearly impossible to get promoted. More commonly, people get promoted once and then it’s nearly impossible to get promoted a second time. On the flip side, I know 3 people who turned down promotions because of workload concerns and dealing with big personalities. The Diversity Committee is straight white women, who are upset with the straight white men who run the company (justifiably). Then nothing happens because of the limitations set on the committee by the straight white men. They do not care. This sounds obvious, but people have walked into HR sobbing, and they won’t acknowledge the issue or follow up.