Disappointing Waste of my Early Career Years
Pros
Pearson does offer a fairly reasonable work life balance, I never once in 4 years with the company experienced being denied PTO or otherwise finding myself in a bad balance. While I did occasionally work evenings or weekends, it was more my willingness to jump in and help than a requirement from the company. The company also seems to do an excellent job on Diversity and Inclusion, many employee ERGs and a very welcoming environment for everyone. To that end, I had the pleasure of working with some amazing people at Pearson over the years. Amazing managers, coworkers and even partners to the business. In many ways what kept me there was simply the people. At least during my tenure there, there was also a sensible approach to remote and hybrid work. Though I've heard some of this is changing, there are massive props needed to acknowledge that the company handled the covid transition extremely well and continued reasonable policy making past most companies RTO.
Cons
Career Opportunities - Probably the single most frustrating aspect of my time at Pearson was the complete lack of upward mobility. I had expressed to all my managers and leaders over the years that I had a keen interest on building a career with the company and moving up. This was generally well received by my direct supervisors, but once you reached director+ level, it fell on flat ears. It took ages to get them to create the "Senior" version of my position for example, with multiple back tracks and constant delays. Truth be told, I think that was as far as they would have ever let me go in the company. They had no problem adding responsibility to my position, but never allowed me to actually have the right title (much less compensation). I didn't see opportunities to move upwards, could not get connected to the right resources however much I tried, and eventually gave up trying to grow with the company. Leadership - In our division (POLS) the director level and above was a constant circus. There was a rotating cast of some excellent leaders bogged down by those completely unqualified for their positions. This resulted in a lot of infighting, abysmal communication, and at best a total disconnect from the ground floor. I had countless meetings with directors, VPs and the like where my pitches for new improvements resulted simply in arguing among themselves (typically about items that were answered weeks prior in an unread email). Efficiency is not this companies strong suit, and it shows in the constant decline.
