Pros
There are some very smart people working here and some people have a good breadth of experience beyond Frontiers and PhD life. The work life balance is quite good and there is a great team spirit in some teams.
Cons
Salaries are quite low by Swiss standards. A lot of mismatch between job roles and people's expertise. Eg. Some journal managers have very limited knowledge of the wider publishing landscape and their targets and job role is very much about number crunching rather than ensuring academic excellence. I have seen a lot of unprofessional egotism and bullying in this company as although Frontiers is seen as an easy way into scientific publishing, some people seem to think they are exceptional, and a law onto themselves, because they work at Frontiers. This distracts from how Frontiers is still developing its distinctiveness as a publisher and frankly faces many of the same challenges as other publishing houses. This comes back to how although Frontiers is growing as a publisher, the company sacrifices numbers for actual innovation and academic excellence. Eg. A lot of the Editorial boards need cleaning but this gets pushed to the side in favour of number crunching. There are also a lot of privileged people, particularly British and Italian, who work in this company. This comes across in how some people claim authority over absolutely menial tasks. Also, I have heard unsolicited personal details from HR staff about other people. This is seriously unimpressive and reflects how management essentially see people, especially in the lower levels, as cogs who have to compete for scraps to get promoted: Frontiers represents itself as young and dynamic but this is code for how people are replaceable and they don't care, and don't know, how to develop people's careers.
