Vantaggi
You get to make books, the people you work with are creative, and some people genuinely want to save the company.
Svantaggi
Management has no idea how to run a successful business in the best of conditions, has no vision, is slow to react to trends, panics and switches directions over and over again, and while they talk about how great change is, any suggestions are met with "that's not what we do." What they do is make books nobody buys. You've never read a Quarto book and never will. Pay is barely living wage in a city and they wonder why they can't recruit or retain good talent. All the offices are pitted against one another and communication is discouraged, which trickles down and creates paranoia and misinformation within the individual offices. Our office was totally unprepared for having remote employees, as most of their business is still being done on paper in the Year of Our Lord 2020. People get burned out and rarely last more than a year or two and if they do, they completely check out and go dead in the eyes. Who knew making books could be so hard? Due to the financial impact of the coronavirus, we were told our hours and pay would be cut 20%. Not the executives, just the workers. At least we were told there would be no firings. Then a few days later I was laid off along with two of my coworkers. No severance and denied a full payout of my vacation time.