THE proverbial 'we offer no benefits, will stress you out for no valid reason, and won't listen to what you say, but hey we're giving you a headspace subscription, that'll fix it :)' employer. Most of what i've read here rings true. here's my takes on it:
-employer is cheap as hell: low pay for switzerland, especially for uni graduates. the company used to save money hiring grads as interns for 6 months
- content of the job is repetitive template-email-sending AI will be able to do within 6 months. your interlocutors are increasingly less relevant scientists identified and automatically contacted via massive email campaigns
- very different workloads depending on teams; some can't even keep afloat, others have loads of free development time
- in general if you care about quality you will be pushed to go against your ethics to meet objectives
- insane staff turnover
- high pressure target-driven environment from even the lowest levels targets reach lofty heights that are beyond unrealistic. they are set in a top-down manner then distributed down, with no regard to the resources available, or the realism in that figure. making 60% of target is what's realistic for most
- fake culture of pseudoenthusiasm. if you object to feasability or wisdom of targets, you will be in a very difficult position to maintain.
- short of not sending your required emails at all, you have very little control over actually reaching any desired target.
- quantity over quality. people have been told off for not moving a project forward if a quality element was missing (for ex. an editor not having a phd)
- very poor employee growth and management practices: aggressive performance management applied with differing standards, people being discouraged from applying to other departments by their own managers (usually to save them from having to hire again), individual targets liable to double one month to the next without any extra resource afforded to you (but punishment is swift and can go up to and including termination)
- people who tell you you won't be fired 'for performance' are lying (i've seen it happen more than once). however, not everyone whose performance is poor will be fired - it all depends on how well you play up to internal politics. as such, absolutely incompetent staff who have enough of a connexion with managers get to stay despite lackluster results
- generally internal hiring/promotion very much favoritism-driven
- overtime officially discouraged (and unpaid), but target-pressure implicitly encourages it. some people actually report 40 hours (to not get reprimanded) but do more so they can make target
- tedious performance reviews every 6 months instead of yearly (and employees don't grade their manager back). this will be used to gaslight you that your 'low' performance is actually due to how you write your emails.
- little to no career growth available (especially outside the london office): you may be able to climb a couple of echelons into junior/middle management (if you're a yes-man) but that is it. if you aren't brown-nosing and 'just doing your work' you will stagnate in your contributor role and get performance managed out
- erratic and poorly thought out management decisions: a major internal restructure of the editorial dpt was carried out in 2020, only to introduce later the creation of a 'new' team to handle tasks that as a result had become neglected
- since remote work became the norm (pre2020 it was VERY hard to get any), hiring in CH has stopped entirely (except for internal transfers and special high-level jobs), and hiring in cheaper EU countries has proliferated. if you are in CH, read the writing on the wall. if you are in one of the newer EU offices, just wait until they can hire even cheaper outside the EU/UK. i would bet it's in the works
if you're good at anything, and know how to write a job application, you shouldn't stagnate there. move on to better things.
