Houghton Mifflin Reviews

Pros

Our mission is honorable. Leadership is really trying to communicate better.

Cons

Leadership still makes decisions about tactical and operational issues without adequate uncut from the people who actually do the work.

Pros

The working conditions are great. The job itself is great.

Cons

No advancement, Senior management only cares about getting ahead with their careers. There is no employee appreciation, no raises, no career paths.

Advice to Senior Management

Car about the people that work for you that are not in upper management. Provide training and advancement.

Pros

Worked with smart, professional people.

Cons

Hard work is not always appreciated

Advice to Senior Management

Don't let talented people go!!

Pros

-Brand name in publishing
-Interesting co-workers
-Discounted books
- Nice employee parties and special occasions
- It is a good place to come, after one is experienced because managers do have a say in the direction that the work should take. Also managers have permanent contracts, something that most editors do not have.

Cons

-No room for advancement
- No recognition for hard work
- No internal recruiting for better jobs
- No opportunities to learn new skills
- No permanent contracts
- One has a job and that is it...therefore the tasks become automated and voring. I worked with people who have worked in the same position for 10 years!

Advice to Senior Management

Give chances to people to learn and grow

Pros

Great brand, great books, great colleagues

Cons

Most colleagues are now gone, either layed off or quit. Being based in Boston you have limited ability to move around to other competitors, which is a must for promotion in this business. The current management took on an enormous amount of debt and are now strip mining the company. It was bad when I left and it is worse now. A shame because so many talented people do/did work there.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop loading up on debt you do not need. Stop misleading employees--we constantly read about serious company changes in the paper first, and only then received an internal memo about it. Don't think you can simply fire everyone with experience and hire young 20-somethings without experience to do an adequate job.

Pros

The company offers good benefits such as full medical insurance which was a huge thing for someone straight out of graduate school.

Cons

Company was in chaos with pending merger. Company needs to focus on recruitment and hiring practices. They often promote from within, which can be good for continuity, but that only works when the employee is trained properly. Promoting from within is sometimes the easy way out. Often when positions open up elsewhere, they simply transfer veterans over whom they do not want to release. This can be detrimental when those employees are not a good match for the new job.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate as openly as possible with employees. Encourage organizational learning with the company by creating an environment of where trust, psychological safety, and organizational commitment are realities.

Pros

Recognition as a lead publisher.
Book discounts
interesting co-workers

Cons

no opportunities to learn new skills
no room for growth-many of my coworkers had had the same title for more than 5 years. I left three years ago and those who are still there, have the same title and are doing the same things.
Since there are no incentives to move up it is easy to find that many people don't care about their job and coast through it. Also, in many cases employees work on a contract basis, which leaves many looking for new jobs all the time and not concentrating in compleating their project.

Advice to Senior Management

Create an environment in which people's ideas can thrive in, do not get stuck in formal ways, invest in people. I worked on a "new" project, but the thruth is that it was more like a remake of a previous edition. I believe that management should spend money more efficiently, and by that i mean to say that if the book is just a newer version, spend less money on research and more on hiring new talent. Or spend more in new research, and get the experienced people to create soemthing new.

Pros

Large, established company with a long history and strong heritage. Good benefits, including a generous retirement plan.

Cons

The levels of beaurocracy are ever so many. Upper management at corporate headquarters was clearly out of touch with the value of smaller divisions & branches and expressed complete & utter disinterest in the feedback & opinions of individuals more than 1 or 2 levels beneath them.

Leadership is there, its presense is felt, but to folks working "in the trenches" as individual contributors and lower managers, this leadership feels completely detached and foreign. A division moves in one direction, then priorities may suddenly change high up the chain, and significant effort and momentum down below is rendered pointless.

Advice to Senior Management

Broaden your horizons of communication. Listen not just to your loudest "yes men." Give the time of day to the dissenting opinion. Visit the smaller offices and spend a little time there. Set up random meetings with lower managers to get a more honest view of what's happening down on the ground.

Pros

Houghton is a stable large company which publishes educational book. It has great benefits and a good salary structure. The work hours are generally 9am to 5pm and the work environment is good. For the most part the people are nice and knowledgeable.

Cons

Houghton is a company stuck in the past. Many of the senior staff have been there for years and are more concerned with their personal status rather then the running of the company. Consequently, it can take months even years to to effect any change at Houghton. While Houghton has the resources to be a 21st century company, it is burdened by a management staff that is stuck in the 1970's.

Advice to Senior Management

Houghton is made up of a series of divisions. Either empower the divisions to run themselves or provide stronger central leadership. The current situation of every change being a series of political maneuvers leaves Houghton as a lumbering giant unable to compete in a modern world.