Engaging work but unreliable, erratic, and untrustworthy management
Pros
*As a writer, you have the opportunity to fully utilize your mad skills in a remote and flexible-time environment. If you love researching cutting-edge science/engineering topics, utilizing nuanced critical thinking, and writing in general, this work can be very engaging. Additionally, you will find you have a ton of support from your fellow writers, team leaders, and other middle managers. Make no mistake - this is a hard job. However, you will be forged into a quickdraw writing mercenary capable of handling some really difficult writing tasks, in bulk, in as little as 6-8 months! You accrue a lot of experience and competencies in a remarkably short period of time. And it's nice that hours are fairly flexible and the role is basically perfect for introverts. *As a team leader (historically recruited from writers but this may not always be so), you will be thrown into a whirling vortex of responsibility. Cons will be noted below, but the pros to this are that you will develop a ton of skills related to leadership, editing, customer service, interpersonal communication, multi-tasking, and legal case preparation. You WILL become a highly competent and adaptable destroyer of challenging tasks and situations that others would be blown away by. I came to Hudson with a grad degree and a couple of years of administrative experience and still learned a ton in this role. Like when you're a writer, you also receive a ton of support and a strong feeling of comradery from your team members and the other team leaders. As a team leader, your pay can be pretty ok, or even pretty good, especially if this is an early career move for you. Besides the feeling of daily failure (noted under Cons), I actually loved being a team leader. Universal to most positions at Hudson, you'll learn a lot of useful skills very quickly, get an intro course in immigration law (esp. if you are a big question-asker), and get to work with an amazing group of people from all different academic and professional backgrounds (lots of INFPs and INFJs, but every MB type is represented). For most of us, the work feels very fulfilling. You're not only helping immigrants continue their lives and careers in the United States, but you are also given the opportunity to tell new and purposeful stories about their careers in diverse fields.
Cons
*As a writer, the pay isn't great. Some writers can make a lot of money taking on a lot of extra projects, but you shouldn't go in expecting to be a superstar (it's hard to predict, despite one's ability, and heavily reliant on how well you adapt to Hudson's unique writing approaches). Pay aside, the respect granted to you and your abilities by upper management appears to be 0. Sadly, you will just have to accept that you can only receive validation from your coworkers who actually know the skill and grit it takes to do the job. I was constantly bewildered by how little upper management seemed to know about day-to-day writer responsibilities, especially because people constantly reached out to educate them. Charitably, they are out of touch (they are not writers by inclination or training). Less charitably, but maybe more realistically, they think the job is very easy and consequently they do not value it very highly, even though they would very likely fail to match the output of a single moderately-trained writer if asked to do so. *As a team leader, your role, like writer, is very misunderstood by upper management, which makes it very hard to feel heard. Also, remember that whirling vortex of responsibility? It's painful. You have a ton of responsibilities and not enough time to complete them to either management's or your own satisfaction. Basically every team leader I ever spoke with expressed deep regret that there was not enough time in the day for them to do their best by the clients. As a former team leader, I can confirm that it's very likely you'll feel like a failure daily because you can't maintain your own standards with the overbearing workload. It's a constant rolling gloom even as you feel a bit shored up by the amazing amount of purposeful work you still manage to accomplish each day. Overall, I think this is a good place to work in the short to mid-term, particularly if you're early in your career, hungry for new skills, desperate for a writing job, and/or making a career change (while it's hard to get hired, it's easy to make it to the writing evaluation stage, where only your writing skills matter, regardless of work history). However, you have to be aware that you will be constantly stressed and that upper management remains a malignant influence that increasingly micromanages every aspect of the company despite lack of curiosity about best practices or any emotional intelligence whatsoever. Even if they are not breathing down your neck, you're going to feel this net-negative leadership in erratic and rushed out policy changes, poor communications, dismissive emails, and general actions that make you think, "why?!" They are also increasingly rushing training, relying more and more on contractors over full-time employees, and closely monitoring all work activity and communications, even private gchats with coworkers. An employee was fired without notice recently for the content of their gchats. Upper management is the #1 reason this company hemorrhages skilled employees and can't seem to ever hit enough critical mass to handle all of its clients comfortably. A common thought among employees is that the company would be better off if they were just entirely absent and left everyone to their own devices. The work is great, but management makes an otherwise fantastic place a real gloomy swamp of stress.
