This company seems to work on the McKinsey model of ruthless cost cutting, and constant restructurings and redundancies are a big part of that. Future behaves as if it’s in perpetual survival mode - no expenses, few benefits, recruitment freezes - though senior management are constantly boasting about how well the firm is doing, and the millions paid to the CEO is proof of that. They say they are unashamedly commercial which means that they take the outdated hard capitalist view that their overriding responsibility is to the shareholders (conveniently senior management are big shareholders). The CEO seems genuinely to believe that she is the only special one - queen bee over thousands of drones, the only one who is really ‘worth it’. which I guess is why she makes megabucks and Future has a long tradition of very low (below market) salaries for everyone else . Zillah is very clever and so of course she knows there is no business without content, but she doesn’t care about it or value it and editorial staff are seen. as just worthless content drones. If you’re young and want a start in sales or another purely commercial team this could be a fun place to work for a year or two. No one else looks to be having a good time. The London office is modern and clean but soulless, loads of brands/departments crammed into big echoing open plan offices, no sense of individual team cultures, or any culture, except the grim ‘We all row the boat’, ask-no-questions, work-until-you-drop and just-be -grateful -you-have-a-job mentality. It doesn’t feel like a creative industry. You could be in an accountancy firm’s office or a call centre. Teams are moved around the place with no notice or consultation. Comms generally are shocking. In cold weather this winter the London office was freezing. People were working in puffa coats, beanies and scarves. But there was no comms about it . Was it a malfunction? Had they turned the heating off to save costs? Did anyone care? No one knows. Looking at past reviews I saw that HR (People and no culture) get quite defensive here when people say the Unlimited PTO is a con and there is no work life balance. But it’s true. Lots of people barely get to take their statutory time off, certainly be flagged if you tried to take more than six weeks though six weeks is normal at lots of firms. But as you have no set leave you can’t be paid out for untaken leave. maternity benefits are way below standard for a media business, and work-life balance is rubbish. If they cared about sustainable workloads, if they were one bit sincere about staff welfare, they’d not have recruitment freezes and redundancies that force already overloaded teams to take on more work. Saying ‘we encourage people to take the time off they need’ is just an insult in the reality of it. Future is not a creative company. It grows through acquisitions and then restructuring the firms it buys, cutting out all the fat - including all the creative and strategic thinkers. It means short term profit gains but it’s not going to lead to long term growth. Future is like the Death Star, patrolling the media universe, invading benignly run planets,slaughtering their leaders and subjugating their people.
