Wiley reviews

Basically no training and you’re expected to bring in proposals immediately, even if starting from scratch. The VP fosters a competitive environment and micro manages to an extreme amount. Managers are stretched thin and have no time to help or mentor, which is frustrating. The company is obsessed with AI and moving as fast as possible. The job is also so meeting heavy and so many of the meetings are a waste of time or so unorganized.

All corporations are capitalist hellscapes, but Wiley and Publishing Solutions strike me as especially depressing. I once saw a Twitter thread about how Doc Martens shoes used to be much higher quality, lasting even up to a decade, until the company started using cheaper materials that easily fell apart to increase their profit margin and long-term sales. And that’s essentially what this division does: They constantly try to find ways to make the work “more efficient” (i.e. faster but ultimately worse quality) just so that the guys up top can make more money. Management will bend over backwards to appease clients, promising things that are unreasonable or flat out impossible because they don’t know what it’s like in their direct reports’ shoes and just want to make more deals. (Publishing Solutions’ business model is essentially to encourage societies to fire their in-house journal staff and hire us as contractors instead, which feels profoundly gross.) Wiley has made millions in AI licensing revenue but claims to have had to freeze hiring and yearly merit raises. The push for employees to use AI is extremely troubling, and every presentation I’ve attended on the subject seems to imply that the future of my job is to become an AI prompt engineer. Management is willing to listen to concerns but rarely takes the steps needed to address them. The only thing they will do is offer vague platitudes and then kick the can down the road; they aren’t willing to level with you because they drank the Kool-Aid long ago. I suppose they’re just hoping to make themselves useful enough to stay onboard once Wiley replaces all the rest of us with AI (which I have no doubt will happen eventually in the name of “efficiency”). You get lots of PTO, but you have to secure coverage yourself, so if you have many projects it can be difficult and not even worth the effort of taking time off. If you don’t take PTO between Christmas and New Years, expect to be covering for 2-3 people on top of the projects you already do. (A wonderful way to spend the holidays.) Wiley technically offers summer Fridays, but at Publishing Solutions you’re encouraged to work longer during the first half of the week in order to leave early on Friday and still get in your 40 hours, so there’s really no point.