Pros
-Work/life balance is generally really healthy. -Paid time off is ridiculously good. -Most people are genuinely nice. -Many managers (up to say, team leader level) are invested and easy to work with. Things like work from home days, etc. are generally easy to come by if you need them. -Office environment's super relaxed. Medford and Hoboken recently moved to an open concept, which has actually been a very welcome change.
Cons
1. Talent development opportunities are more or less nonexistent. Lip service gets paid, but a trial run of online-based courses in fall 2016 wasn't extended. Rather than give in-person trainings, the company's chosen to rely on self-guided and generic online training. A Learning Champion pilot was brought together but resulted in no tangible improvements despite input from nearly every employee in the Research business. New managers are given no resources on coaching, skills, etc. except what they get from their own managers. It's truly stunning that a learning company can be this inept at training their own staff. 2. HR has some good colleagues, but the organization as a whole is killing morale. Wiley decided to change from a merit-based annual raise to a market-based one, then tossed the communication/rationalization of that decision to managers who were ill-equipped to do so. Requests for HR support were referred to a PowerPoint deck. Non-Hoboken/Oxford colleagues weren't even told in person. I sat in an online meeting where all questions/objections could be typed into a chat box. Very empowering. On top of that, many teams don't have clear career paths and get zero assistance in putting them into place. I'm a manager constantly worrying about employee retention, not because of the job but because simple needs like this aren't being met and calls for change fall on deaf ears. 3. Constant reorganizations, which aren't a bad thing in and of themselves (the whole publishing industry is in a change or die kind of mode), but the communication is not acceptable (whole organizations are changed with no clear communication put out) and some teams are just left alone with no reasoning. The newest leadership team comes from predominantly outside of publishing, which is both refreshing and horrifying as they're both making needed changes, but also don't seem to have a clear understanding of the industry. 4. Communications and processes vary widely from team to team and region to region, so your head will constantly be spinning trying to figure out who does what on any given project. Trying to add governance in at any level is an exercise in frustration because you can get buy-in from a manager but then their team doesn't follow through. No accountability. 4. If you're not in editorial, and more specifically, society editorial, be prepared to see a whole lot of double standards. Some people are great to work with, but others are complete cowards and will tacitly ignore other departments, just so they don't have to ever question a client. This makes it nearly impossible to offer any kind of consistent service or message to clients, and we're always on the back foot and feeling like we're having to argue internally before anything even goes out to a client. Internal politics and dramatics abound. 5. This doesn't just apply to Wiley, but the salary range is really low. I'd be fine with getting paid "market rate" if it was clear what that was based on. The salary ranges don't ever seem to change all that much, despite publishing changing massively over the past 3-5 years and people doing jobs that are drastically different than what they were hired for. I have colleagues at competitors that seem to be getting paid significantly more.