McGraw-Hill – “Look elsewhere if you seek long-term employment and/or don't wish to remain a "temp" forever.”

Pros

The editorial staff with which I worked was remarkably competent and dedicated. In my many years of working in publishing, I had never before encountered such a skilled bunch of coworkers. I felt a huge amount of loyalty while working at CTB/McGraw-Hill, but that loyalty was directed solely toward my coworkers, not management.

Cons

(1) As a corporate entity, CTB/McGraw-Hill seems to be sliding into oblivion. It produces and scores standardized K-12 tests under contract with state education departments, and it is suffering the fallout from education-department budget cutbacks and from aggressive industry competition that didn't exist several years ago. Substantial worker layoffs have been occurring periodically, in waves, since early 2008. In addition, I know of at least one important customer that the company lost solely because the contract, when up for renewal, was incompetently drafted by the company's legal department.

(2) Regardless of the company's financial condition at any given moment in time, management truly seems not to value the wonderful editorial staff it has. When rounds of layoffs take place, those with the most experience and knowledge are typically at the top of the heave-ho list. Moreover, the company has long mastered the art of exploiting temporary workers; it receives what amounts to full-time labor, over the course of many years in lots of cases, from tons of people to whom it doesn't need to offer paid vacation time, health-care insurance, or other benefits. A sizable percentage of the company's de facto full-time workforce consists of "temps.” In fact, the standardized tests produced by the company, once they have been administered to students and returned to CTB/McGraw-Hill, are scored by temporary employees only! Many of these test evaluators (as they're called) are hired "off the street" on an as-needed basis and have never scored a test before in their lives.

Advice to Senior Management

Please read the review above and give some thought to how you treat your workers. Frankly, it is unconscionable to reap the fruits of the labor of persons who contribute to your "bottom line" on what amounts to a full-time basis and yet hang these people out to dry as "temps" indefinitely.