The worst employee experience I've ever had. - Anonymous employee Sourcebooks Employee Review

1.0
Mar 2, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good to put on your resume. The company is growing.

Cons

The challenges of working at Sourcebooks: office location, insane workloads, uneven policies amongst employees / offices, departments are understaffed, employees are underpaid, blatant favoritism, micromanagement from the top down, little time off, minimal flexibility, expensive health insurance, complete loss of work / life balance, high turnover rates, zero training for incoming staff, management's inability to communicate expectations, and a CEO who has the entire office walking on eggshells every day. My advice to potential candidates, should they choose to work for Sourcebooks, is to only work in the NYC or Connecticut offices. Those offices boast a much nicer place to work, a better work / life balance, and flexibility. The Naperville office is dysfunctional and disrespectful to its employees.

Explore other reviews about Sourcebooks

5.0
Jun 20, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible managers, great team, genuine openness to growth and learning, meaningful work

Cons

None to speak of at this moment

1.0
Apr 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

In hindsight, I'm not sure if there were any apart from some friendly coworkers.

Cons

I infuriatingly see promotions handed out left and right via LinkedIn, but just know that actually being someone to get to that level means literally grovelling and being lucky enough to be in the good graces of the egotistical CEO. Upper management brown-noses her as their main job, and they will prevent you from any upward mobility if you're not one of her favorites (which seems to be picked based on how much you kiss up to her, and if you keep your own opinions to yourself, and other factors entirely unrelated to your actual performance). Absolutely criminally high monthly healthcare premiums, paired with insanely high deductibles, bare-minimum PTO, and mat leave. HR is a joke and not one HR employee seems to last very long. Salaries are abysmal, even by publishing standards. Most books acquired are bottom-of-the-barrel since they don't pay most of their authors much, and they have to be edited within an inch of their lives to be readable and marketable. I left the industry after this company and have never been happier.

2
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