A solid place to work that needs new leadership
Pros
They have renovated all the floors in the Philadelphia office to be a more modern workplace. The 16th and 17th floors have the open concept with no assigned seating. The 18th floor (the engineering floor) does have assigned seating with standing desks and all the fun modern stuff you would expect in a tech environment. Speaking of tech environment, Elsevier is making a strong push to become more a technology company than just a health information company. As an engineer, you’ll be using pretty up-to-date programs and protocols to write software. The kitchen is pretty nice with a beer fridge. People in general who work there are quite chill and understanding. Work life balance can be good if you set good guidelines. If you are always available to work, the team will constantly ask you to do something (nights/weekends/holidays/etc). If you are off your phone and not answering Slack messages or emails, people will get the gist and let you live your life outside of work. 401(k) match of 5% is solid.
Cons
Health benefits are quite expensive. Management needs a lot of work. Leadership here is quite poor and it starts from the top. Whether it be non-professional behaviors from execs, to just not understanding how to lead a group, Elsevier needs to really think about what to do here. Some of the software is unstable (especially during high traffic periods) and can crash a lot. Instead of the teams going back and trying to stabilize the platforms that need to be stabilized, there is a constant rush to get new features out and hence more instability. While, yes, this is common with many companies, it would still be nice to work on the issues that consistently plague some of the software.
