Valuable brands (and experienced staff) are shed as company stumbles to find audience and profit
Pros
Mostly, the employees care about what they're creating and the people with whom they're collaborating despite regular doom-and-gloom forecasts and constant belt-tightening. And most of people left there are highly creative, resourceful and good at their jobs. (They have to be, given the tight budgets and small staff sizes in each department.) Not that it adds all that much considering the negatives, the office location is nice, being right on the water along the San Francisco Bay. To many, that's offset by its relative seclusion--away from restaurants and shops, and away from San Francisco proper and with a limited shuttle schedule if you want to take the train.
Cons
Unfortunately, after numerous reductions in the job benefits, forced furloughs and a shrinking workspace over the past few years, if you stick around you become numb to how dire the situation truly is--especially when the UK parent keeps telling you that it's "turning the corner." And when headcount cuts happen (repeatedly), there's a potential for higher-ups to throw staff under the bus to save themselves, so you always feel like your job is sitting on the edge of a razor. In an Internet age, media business is evolving and companies/executives need to adapt, but Future can't seem to find its way to keep readership and find profit, so it loses (or kills off) great, established brands, and with that, loses lots of good, qualified people. I'm not sure the management--especially if there are new people regularly brought in to try to effect positive change--knows what it has to do to change with the landscape, so there's a lot of "let's try this...okay, now let's try this..." strategy shifting. It's sad, because the company successfully redefined itself a number of years ago (as it went from Imagine to Snowball, then to Future) and built its business back up, only to stumble badly as it seemingly missed seeing how the Internet was forcing it to radically change its business. Right now, I'm not sure it'll maintain relevance and find a good business model before its emperors discover they're not wearing any clothes...or more that the investors will discover the clothes they bought for the emperors aren't being worn.
