CMP Media Reviews

Pros

CMP Media has a very good benefits package -- IF you take advantage of it. The company allows time off for volunteering, flexible summer hours (some offices), and often supports work-from-home schemes. The emphasis is on getting the job done and done well rather than getting in done during these working hours or this/that particular way. Tuition assistance is very good. HR staff has always been astounding. Employees with 7 years' experience with the company get sabbatical. Even the layoff package is pretty sweet.

Cons

CMP has rebranded itself, restructured its departments, and reclassified its corporate culture so many times no one knows who CMP Media employees are any more or what they do.

Advice to Senior Management

TRAIN middle management better.

Pros

Location in SF was fun, good benefitsand met some great people working here. Close to South park and many newer restaurants near ball park

Cons

managment not listening to employees
after merger place was miserable have beeno losing people for years. no communication. Managment in NY too indifferent to CA workers

Advice to Senior Management

pay attention to your employees, try to promote from within based on ability not on those who have been there longest

Pros

Good benefits and casual work environment.

Cons

Unbelievably unorganized company. "Management" in HR Dept. is a joke and puts more emphasis on quotas than the actual quality of the employees. Hated going to work every day. If you want job growth, challenges and people that respect you don't work for CMP.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop mico-managing and get organized. You'll never make it with the big boys in Publishing until your company grows up. The employees that you hire are sub-par at best and you're hiring people for the wrong reasons.

Pros

Some nice, really smart people. Good location. Well-read co-workers. Some fun lunches out (pre-recession). Big company with decent benefits. OK about vacation time.

Cons

Honestly, I don't know how l lasted so long here. The first round of layoffs came 3 months after I started and that should have been a warning sign. People who had been there 20 years were just dumped. Some people who showed up before 8 and stayed until past 7pm were let go, but others who came in at 11am and left at 5pm were kept. Made no sense. The whole vibe was kind of one that was outdated and there was an acceptance of screaming as a tactic to motivate people. I honestly have never heard yelling like that in an office before. Management was at best inept, and at worse, cruel. It cured me of ever wanting to work in publishing again.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to at least pretend like you care about your employees. If you have to lay them off, at least don't humiliate them in the process. Figure out who does the actual work, before you do the layoffs.

Pros

It used to be a great place to work. Strong leadership, lots of team playing, but the company lost its edge around the same time the dot com bust hit, and could never figure out its Internet strategy. The company has always offered good benefits, however. And for a long time was a good supporter of telecommuting, thus promoting work/life balance.

Cons

The company really lost its way after the dot com bust. It could never figure out, and still hasn't figured out, its Internet strategy. Every year or so the company comes up with a "new strategy" but it's basically the same old same put together by the same old boy's network that sits at the top and and plays musical chairs.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in new senior management with fresh ideas and no institutional CMP baggage.

Pros

I've been there for the good days and the bad days. In the good days, there were tons of perks, bonuses, parties and events, generous salaries, awards. There was an acceptance of work-life needs that wasn't found elsewhere. The type of leadership you'd find really depended on which publication you worked on, and in which department, but my top manager on my first pub was absolutely top notch! He personally allowed for practically unlimited professional growth. Whatever level you were willing to take it to, he was supportive. He didn't throw money at you indiscriminately, but certainly rewarded good work. I'm describing my "good" experience strictly within a single publication. This description does not include senior management.

Cons

Low expectations plus high salaries equals a staff full of lazy lifers! It's dull, creatively stifling, and breeds dissatisfaction. Underqualified people often find themselves promoted, by default (i.e. somebody above them leaves), to positions they aren't equipped for. This leads to either a false sense of entitlement, or a shifty fear of being found out. The fear of being discovered leads these people to make a full-time job of sabotaging others to make themselves look good. I saw this across the board, in the good days and the bad days, at the nice pub (at the middle management level) and the not-nice pub (from the top right on down!). You can't just promote someone because they're THERE and expect them to lead with confidence! In the last pub I worked on for this company, I saw four people in a row (on ONE publication!) get witch-hunted, provoked, sabotaged and set up to fail, so they were eventually fired. The economy had gone sour, jobs were being cut, and it became a game of predator and prey. If you didn't want to be next, you had to make the other guy look bad, and some people did this with relish. It was truly shameful, but I don't think the company is like that across the board. That one particular publication is led by a 20+ years lifer with a God complex. Play up to that ego, and you can stay, regardless of your qualifications or lack thereof. But... why would you want to?

Advice to Senior Management

Raise your expectations and encourage people (positively! not by fear!) to meet them.

Pros

Benefits were great and generally it was a fun environment. I was promoted several times, and, to be honest, never worked all that hard (although there were some exceptions).

Cons

Vision was a overused and under utilized word. Battles developed over the silliest and most irrelevant things. You basically had to be incompetent AND stealing from the company before they would fire you--just one element and you'd linger on for years.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate! No double speak.

Pros

CMP has some great publications, and a decent reputation in the industry from a content/publication standpoint.

Cons

Politics run everything at CMP, and their management team is one of the worst in publishing. Fear and intimidation are the tactic of choice, including calling the office at 6am and 6pm each day to "check up" on who is in the office and who dared to go home. Work life balance is in serious disarray. I worked for a competitive publisher for 6 years prior to joining CMP and can confidently say that CMP is in serious need of a major overhaul.

Advice to Senior Management

If management would spend as much time developing the product and teams as they spend in backroom politics, self-promotion and intimidation, CMP might have a change of regaining its previous status. For now they seem doomed.

Pros

It was a good enough job, without too much pressure. People were by and large friendly, benies were good. They didn't expect too much of their technical staff which allowed me to learn quite a bit, even though I had to initiate it all. It would have been a great place to calcify, not learn anything, go home on time every single day, that sort of thing.

Cons

Not a place to innovate, not a place to push yourself or others to do fantastic things.

Advice to Senior Management

You need better technical managers, first off. People involved with the business, who know the business, but who can spearhead technology in a professional way. There's a very garage-y approach and I think it hurts the company.

Pros

If you cant find another job, then perhaps, but only then

Cons

My career has actually regressed since working at CMP, and I am paid less than i was 5 years ago, if you factor in cost of living.

Advice to Senior Management

Let people do the jobs they are paid to do, and not everyone elses.
too many people make decisions that are irrelevant to their jobs, and hinder
others from doing their jobs well.