Vantaggi
The magazine I edited looked great on a resume. Gave me InDesign experience. Office location was cool? That's about it.
Svantaggi
First and foremost, I was never paid for the work I did. I worked on one of their magazine titles for 5 months beginning in November 2017 on contract, and was owed compensation close to $1,000 that I still haven't received. While freelancing for them, I also received several emails from previous freelancers complaining to management about they hadn't been paid either (this was right after I had started the job, I wouldn't have accepted had I known this was a common disservice). Aside from that, the management and work style is extremely outdated. This makes it difficult to establish a productive work flow (they have no FTP software, for example, because they didn't want to pay for it...even though we suggested using something simple like Dropbox). Most of the job requires reaching out to vendors and asking them if they'd like their products featured in the magazine. However, the company's lack of ability to provide their freelancers with any vendor contacts makes it nearly impossible to get the job done. They'll send you on a wild goose chase to track down gourmet food products to use within the latest issue, and then wonder why you aren't finished compiling a list of them 2 days later. Even if you ask them for some names/phone numbers to reach out to on your own (so you can actually do your job), they'll claim they have no contact list. Instead, they resort to forwarding you hundreds of old emails per day so you can sift through them and find contact info yourself-- a do able task, but a gargantuan waste of valuable time, especially under the deadlines they enforce. Essentially, don't bother applying for a job with any of Talcott's publication titles, unless you are pleased about working under an ancient management system for zero pay.