Atlantic Media Company Reviews

Pros

- great people to work with;
- good values;
- nice building / great location next to the Kennedy Center and Georgetown, can walk across the bridge to VA;
- free coffee and fountain drinks, occasional happy hours, fab x-mas parties;
- looks good on resume, great place to start.

Cons

- compensation leaves to desire more;
- little opportunity for career growth;
- no overtime pay while working extra hours is almost expected - might seem reasonable with the "learning curve" in the beginning, but gets old and weary as time goes by;
- too many managers (and multiplying).

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in your employees. Opportunities for professional growth and continued education seem to be on paper only.

Pros

On the editorial side, people are both incredibly good at their jobs and giving of their time and knowledge to younger employees.

Cons

There is generally more opportunity for growth on the business side of the company, but it varies throughout the different publications, which have very different cultures within the larger Atlantic Media umbrella.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue being transparent with employees about the state of the company, keep moving away from DC stodginess, and bring back bagels.

Pros

-Cool environment
-Random perks like champagne, happy hours, free food, etc even a free trip to Atlantic City
-Working with very accomplished people

Cons

-Boring work
-Low pay
-Very cliquey
-Rarely get promoted and when you do it's barely anything
-Difficult to move up
-Senior management has no clue what's going on

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your employees more!!!!!!!!!!

Pros

Intelligent and colllaborative people
Terrific product

Cons

Small size limits career growth

Advice to Senior Management

Keep growing!

Pros

After working in several offices in and around DC, I can honestly say that I’ve found the best!

Atlantic Media offers a great blend of private, entrepreneurial spirit and profit-driven, bottom line focus. It’s exciting to support an organization that promotes publications with the historic significance of The Atlantic and others with an in-depth overview of the DC political landscape and federal workforce (National Journal and Government Executive).

People - co-workers seem to genuinely like coming to work and are fun to be around

Work – doesn’t always feel like actual ‘work’

Workspace – not your typical stuffy & robotic DC office – causal dress, open office floor plan,

Location – we actually work in the Watergate complex!

Cons

- The work is fast-paced and the entire company seems to be moving at a fast clip, so it’s not ideal for everyone.

- Trivial, but the office space limited lunch options until recently. Still a short walk to GW, but now there are multiple new options with more coming soon.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall, you’ve created a fun, engaging and exciting company. Continue to focus on your people and the office environment as you grow the business and the company should flourish.

Pros

- Good company with a great history
- Generally smart people
- Generally nice people
- Good vacation time and benefits
- Not a lot of micromanagement (which actually stems from a con below)

Cons

- Management doesn't have any vision for employee career growth
- Pay is lacking (part of the business model is to get interns or 24-25 year olds recently out-of-college and pay them very little, which will only work for so long)
- Losing its editorial integrity in the pursuit of pageviews
- Management consistently makes strange hiring decisions and fails to recognize and rewarded the most talented and hard-working.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more attention to what's actually happening on the ground. Hire management that has some clue of how to manage. This is a problem with many creative types, but you can do better. In general business models also need to be better thought-out so that they have long-term viability.

Pros

- Reasonable benefits
- Brand recognition within DC
- Commute-friendly location
- Good place to learn about the media industry and build resume

Cons

- While a formal review system is in place, the criteria for receiving promotions is not clearly defined per functional role; measures of success are subjective and based on each manager's discretion
- Lack of transparency and communication regarding strategic vision, new product offerings and changes in organizational structure
- Company does not promote professional growth or continued education
- Maintaining a high level of employee morale is not a priority for the organization
- Compensation is below average

Advice to Senior Management

- Evaluate performance review system; define criteria for each role; create career path for each role
- Develop 360 review system for senior management
- Encourage idea generation and feedback from the line

Pros

For those of us in web development, we can work from pretty much anywhere that we like, the benefits are great, there are genuinely nice people here, and the things that we do are appreciated. There are a number of different publications to work on and different people to work with. Though it isn't true on all floors, there generally is a sense of community with the developers as well as some of the managers, writers, correspondents, etc.

Cons

Management hasn't modernized much, there are a few people who are not that competant, and the pace of the publishing industry doesn't work well for web development.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the younger people. They know the technology. Hire fewer people with MBAs and more with degrees in Comp Sci.