Pros
My direct coworkers were some of the nicest and most talented people that I have ever worked with. I never had issues with getting equipment that was needed to do my job, even though some people took convincing to modernize certain things.
Cons
To put is as plain, professional, and to the point as possible: OCLC has a leadership crisis. That may sound like hyperbole however, if you take a second to read the other reviews (real reviews and not ones posted by HR) it paints a picture that makes one thing clear, something isn't right with how the company is being ran and there are active efforts to wash that from the public. There is a lot of talk about trying to motivate employees into working hard and changing the dynamic to make things better, however when I tried to implement change VIA the proper channels, I was met with nothing but resistance from my direct manager/managers. As a handful of my former colleges would agree, my manger seemed happy to reap the fruits of my knowledge and skill but when I pushed for some kind of recognition I was met with blatant disregard. I was constantly told that "OCLC is a flat organization" and they are "trying to address it" which was something I heard 6 years ago up until the day I left. There also seems to be a wild disregard to employee feedback. I would caution anyone future or current in being honest in their feedback as the CEO is known to blast it in front of the company town hall and mock it. (yes you read that correctly)... These are issues that people have, I wouldn’t be surprised if this review gets cherry picked and used in a town hall for some reason to further gaslight employees that they should be grateful to work for OCLC when in fact it should be the other way around. The CEO is really pressed on building up his personal brand, which is fine, however my issue is the use of OCLC resources in doing so. The team I worked with was already short staffed and to take any time out of any given month to work on CEO content was very difficult when we should have been developing content that furthers the OCLC public message. There’s a lot of people currently working at OCLC that see all of this. Those are the people that have stuck around for the love of libraries and that was why I stuck around for as long as I did, I was hired to help further that message and I hope that comes back into focus for all my former coworkers sake.
