-Ridiculously low pay with paltry "merit" increases of less than 3% per year despite hearing annually how great the company is doing financially. Work increases yearly but salary does not when you factor in cost of living. I could not survive on my own in this area on my current salary if I had to.
-Poor communication between senior management and those of us at the lower level. Don't be surprised if you hear of changes that directly affect you through the general "announcement" email that is sent to the entire division.
-Too many re-organizations. As soon as you're comfortable working with a particular team they re-organize and you need to start from the beginning all over again. Flexibility is a skill every good worker should possess but some continuity would ensure we're all comfortable and confident in the job we're doing.
-Very high employee turn over which is frustrating not only to the authors (who never seem to work with the same people on two consecutive revisions--and oh will you hear them complain!) but to those of us who stick around who are required to train and retrain new hires (when they actually get around to rehiring...) Those who leave aren't replaced in a timely manner so teams are required to function for months at a time with a skeleton crew.
-Work load has increased exponentially in the last few years with the many different versions of texts now required in addition to our online courses. We're required to get an unreasonable amount of work done in an impossible time-frame with as little man power as possible and when it doesn't happen or we produce sub-par results upper management can't seem to figure out why.
-Too many managers, not enough people actually doing the work necessary to produce the books and their ancillaries.
-Summer hours are great if you can take advantage of them as summer is the busiest and most stressful time of the year at this company if you're directly involved in the producing or selling of books.
-Employee moral is extremely low for the most part. Everyone is always complaining about how miserable they are. Not many have a positive outlook. The most positive comment you will hear is "at least I have a job."
-NO ONE will recognize you for doing a good job, even if you get an "outstanding" performance appraisal.
