Frontiers reviews

It's difficult to write a review this negative without sounding like just another disgruntled employee affected by the mass lay-offs (which should tell you a lot about how the company was run up until now - laying off 35% of staff after hiring over 1000 people the previous year), but i'll try. More than anything, i'd like to prevent anyone from going through the same suffering at work that so many of my colleagues have grappled with over the years. So here we go. - The upper management drowns in hubris, nepotism and favouritism. They have surrounded themselves (from what i can tell, voluntarily) with yes-people and have become utterly immune to criticism of any kind. They may on occasion ask for feedback - that people are eager to provide in a constructive manner - but will either dismiss it, cherry-pick the positive bits and highlight them in company-wide meetings to downplay the real issues, or pretend they never received relevant feedback at all. Either way, no preventive or corrective action is ever taken, and those responsible for bad decisions are never held accountable. - The upper management do not know the difference between vision, strategy and tactics, and refuse to learn. In their panic, they change their minds practically on a daily basis, provide contradictory instructions and offer no structure of any kind, creating confusion and dismay. As a result, nobody knows who is responsible for what, and no one wishes to stick their neck out and make any decisions, and understandably so. - No career progression opportunities will be offered based on merit. You may have the best results in the department (even by the management's unreasonable standards), participate in every department-wide project imaginable, provide concrete solutions to concrete problems and bring monetary and/or reputational value, but if you are not considered as being "aligned" with the company values of "positivity" and do not share their "growth mindset" - or if your manager simply does not like you - you will be overlooked at best, reprimanded at worst. If you want a promotion, they will demand you abandon your values, your common sense and your dignity in exchange. I've watched wonderful bright motivated people turn into empty shells of themselves, become resentful purposeless bitter mutes. There is an alarming number of employees, in the three lower ranks of the company, that are either on extended sick leave or who have left the company because they were too exhausted and heartbroken. - The lower ranks are made to work harder and harder to compensate for a complete lack of vision and guidance from the upper management, and are not allowed to focus on solving problems, only on implementing pointless actions like spamming ever more researchers and scheduling ever more unhelpful calls with researchers. When employees miraculously do succeed in coming close to some of the unrealistic targets, they only receive more work, and never more pay. If they protest, they are labelled as lacking drive, commitment and simply being lazy, and gaslit into believing there is something wrong with them. This is hands down the worst place i have ever worked at, and the valuable lessons in detecting red flags, managing my expectations and detaching myself from my work were not worth the hopelessness i've felt for the past two years.

It is necessary to emphasise that the concerns raised below have not arisen in response to recent events. Serious discontent has been growing for some time – there is plenty of evidence of this in previous (and extremely valid) reviews. Where to start? I suppose the crux of the matter is that the processes and motivations driving decision-making appear to be completely and utterly flawed. The disconnect between the “front lines” and upper management is astounding at times, and the past couple of years have been peppered with a long list of conflicting objectives, unrealistic targets, and failed projects. Genuine attempts to improve quality and integrity have been reined in when it has inevitably been realised that focusing on such concepts compromises “growth”. Nobody is under any illusions about what it means to operate successfully within the academic publishing industry, but the widely-held concerns and objections do not stem from naivety or idealism. Staff have been asked to work in ways that conflict not only with personal ethics but also with the values Frontiers claims to adhere to so closely. Many of the published policies misrepresent the actual workflows imposed on specialists, and the reality of day-to-day operations conflicts with the goal of making research and knowledge dissemination genuinely open and equitable. Top-down communication within the company is often thoughtless, vague, or even dishonest, and negative feedback from the lower levels seems to be largely ignored or discouraged. Changes are made and instructions are given without any apparent consideration of the people who will be affected, and expectations relating to duties, workload, and timescales are sometimes unrealistic to the point of being dehumanising. Automation/AI technologies are certainly useful but they are objectively unable to do the work that we do. Upper management may have overestimated the sophistication of these technologies, but perhaps they have just realised that indiscriminate growth will be easier with less humanistic input. Rapid expansion is often unsustainable, and there seem to be issues across many industries at this time. Difficult decisions may need to be made, and it is never pleasant, but it is at least somewhat reassuring when matters are handled with transparency and empathy. People will not respond well to claims that all cost-saving avenues have been investigated when there is evidence to the contrary, or to being drip-fed information that is intentionally vague. This approach causes a great deal of distress, and compromises the mental, physical, and financial wellbeing of all affected.