USA TODAY Co. reviews

Upper management seems to be disconnected from the reality of the company. In less than 2 years, I had 3 new bosses, my department was split up, I did a different job than I was hired to do. Lots of things like that. The upper-level management is pretty useless. They just come in, blow some smoke up everyone's rear and tell them everything is going so well. The lower level employees are treated like pawns in a chess match. They hire people who literally have no idea how their system or process works and put them on huge accounts. This isn't the "great opportunity" type of situation, this is "just don't screw it up" type thing. They also let people go at random, leaving people with the feeling that the axe might be coming for them at any day. Huge layoffs where lots and lots of people get let go. It's scary. When they let people go, they just throw the work on those who remain. The entire time I was there, I heard stories about how it used to be. Well, it ain't like that anymore. I wasn't in a sales position per se, but I was asked to aid in sales numerous times. The sales people there are greedy and dishonest for the most part. Lots of them don't know or care to learn what they do. They just go out and sell things and hope someone buys it. Also, the commission structure reinforces sales reps to do as little as possible. If they do more than their goals, they don't really make more, but their job gets that much harder the next year. The last thing I'll say about the place. It has no soul. I don't mean that to sound like I'm a bitter former employee. I'm not. For the most part, I enjoyed working there. I met some absolutely amazing people and honestly, I learned a lot. By not having a soul, I mean, it has no real reason for being. The paper side of things is sort of on life support. You'll hear from upper management that it's still alive and strong. But it's not. They decline year over year is ignored and positioned as a "transition to digital" but their product is outrageously over-price and offers less features than most of it's competition. A lot of what the current paper is is just a reason to get ads in front of someone. People don't read the paper like they used to. Sure, some people do, but we're talking a fraction of what it was. So what is it there for? If advertisers aren't seeing results, why keep selling it? This is backed by what I said earlier in "greedy" sales people. These greedy sales (who exist even at the sales director roles) will say whatever needs to be said to sell something. I set in a room while a sales director manipulated the truth to a client to get them to purchase. Saying we're going to hit your target audience, then backfilling with generic targeting. What resulted was about 10% of their audience being their customer base, and the 90% just being the exact same as regular display. They just wind up paying a ~$20CPM. This dishonesty is why I left. I couldn't walk into a room and tell some business owner a lie like this. This is why I say they have no soul. It's not about creating value for clients there. It's about creating revenue for the company. Sure, they are big enough to throw water into a leaky bucket for a while, but eventually, it'll catch up to them. And their eventuality seems to have caught up to them.

They view you as just a number. You will most likely not get a thank you for anything. They are way behind on current marketing strategies. Negative and scattered environment. Little room for advancement