Almost everyone on every level of seniority seems to be overworked and/or underpaid. The systems we use to handle manuscript submissions are absolutely, embarrassingly ancient considering the prestige and financial resources of the company. They are overflowing with errors and bugs which plague the lives of authors and journal staff alike, and are really unacceptable in this day and age, in my opinion. A truly vast amount of time is wasted on menial things like uploading dozens of files one by one, and it can sometimes feel like an exasperating daily grind. My team is full of young bright minds and their intellects are largely wasted. Author service is suffering considerably because the editors and assistants frequently lack the time and morale to do their jobs to the best of their ability.
Despite large profits for the publishing group as a whole, I have seen various redundancies happen and expect more to take place as costs are cut, offices are downsized and more jobs are outsourced, which is very depressing for the people who were already underpaid and ran themselves into the ground trying to stay on top of everything. The organisation is massive, and I feel valued within my team, but beyond that I’m just a number and I very much expect my role to become expendable or outsourced at some point.
Options for progression are quite limited at assistant level. You can become a senior assistant, and perhaps a supervisor or manager but that's pretty much it, unless you look to move to an altogether different team internally. Many people on my team have bailed out in favour of finding a more engaging position at an entirely different company because they simply can’t bear the menial aspects any more.
Despite all this, the editorial assistant role is actually somewhat decent at entry level or for a fresh start, but staff retention is mediocre. It realistically takes a few months to be trained and to feel confident, yet there is a cycle of spending ages training people knowing that they will probably just leave in 12-24 months because the pay is rubbish, they can't progress, they have little to no intellectual stimulation, and they were only staying for their lovely teammates who are all looking to leave.
My own work life balance is neither horrendous nor excellent. In contrast, I work with many editors and I sometimes receive emails from them at 7am or 10pm and I feel bad for them, because it just seems like they are all completely buried 24/7, although perhaps other journals have more evenly distributed workloads.
Overall it’s ‘fine’ but I can’t imagine anyone staying here forever, and I am very keen to move on. The Nature brand is not what it used to be. It feels like the company wants to project a façade of being progressive and modern, but behind the scenes we are tired, running on outdated buggy systems, and there is a strong sentiment that it’s all about targets and the bottom line.
