John Wiley Reviews

Pros

great place to learn from the ground up
great sales meetings in fun locations
invested in developing talented employees
corporate environment but not overly hierarchical

Cons

challenged when it comes to work life balance

Pros

Great colleagues, great benefits, great work-life balance. Managers are pretty approachable. Sharing of knowledge is cool, being able to work with colleagues, clients and vendors from different continents is cool and adds to your resume. Pay is reasonable compared to other local publishers.

Cons

Clients can be nasty - need a lot of patience for this, esp since you're stuck with the same clients throughout your time there.
Work is routine so boredom sets in after a while if following procedures drives you crazy.
Management is great, but previous team leads have left. Newly promoted team leads sometimes have zero people skill - you wonder what is management thinking by promoting these people.....

Advice to Senior Management

Consider if someone will be able to work well with others before promoting them to positions of leadership so they do not abuse their power.

Pros

Kind to employees, flexible, benefits, work from home.

Cons

Pay is below any other company I know of. Lack of internal promotion opportunities

Advice to Senior Management

The matrix management structure works well for journal publishing and most other business units, but is failing the company in magazine B2B publishing sector. Current management in those spaces, in the US, need to better understand the markets they serve, and have more day to day impact on all of the business operations.

Pros

Good place for someone who is looking for job security and to work at one place for a lifetime.
People tend to be very nice.
Good for people who like to dress casually.
,

Cons

A lot of slackers, especially the middle/higher management.
Too big and heavy for its own good.
Too slow in reacting to market forces as the organization is just too big and clumsy with a lot of bad management and top management misplacing trust.
A lot of passing the buck from managers to the bottom-dwellers.
Too many lowly paid workers.
Too many overpaid people who don't do a thing and there are way too many managers/directors around.
Not much good training.
Hardly any room for advancement as there are too many people who never left the company.
No career path.
HR and benefits are a mess.
Do not appreciate talents.

Advice to Senior Management

You need to trim your fats and do an audit of the managers around the world. Be ruthless, if need be. Flush out those who are overpaid and doing nothing and passing the buck. Too lateral an organization. There is really no need for so many managers and directors. Understand your staff and treat them better. Appreciate the staff and do not forget the less vocal staff or those depts that are under the radar. Check the T&E of the management. It is totally outta hand. Adopt the use of technology and assist your staff in their upgrading and learning so that they can move into the future with more confidence. Is there really a need for so many of the staff flying all over the place for meetings when it can be done using the various technological advancement? This is another area where tons of fats can be trimmed and put back into the organization and the staff who deserve more.

Pros

-Work hours are flexible and convenient
-Not micro-managed

Cons

-No training for new employees, you are on your own or at the mercy of co-workers
-poor communiation between departments
-no standard procedures in place for customer service, a customer's question can get routed to 5 different people before it lands in the right place

Advice to Senior Management

-Talk to your employees more and listen to their feedback

Pros

Great people, great company, great products, great benefits

Cons

larger company and corporate feel, as opposed to small, publishing house...can be overwhelming for a first full-time job

Pros

Views over the Hudson are beautiful, the cafeteria has good food, colleagues are some of the nicest people around.

Cons

Little to no room for advancement. Once you're on a track (editorial, marketing, production), expect to stay there. Moving around is hard, despite HR and management's claims to support each individual employee's desire for professional growth.

Not a good place to work if you're not interested in the material you're working with -- best to find a job elsewhere or get out quick, or else you'll get stuck.

Too much bureaucracy and red tape. Production moves slowly, mostly due to unnecessary procedure, and management spends more time putting together committees than doing something useful.

Wiley is only the place to be if you want to be overworked, underpaid, and unhappy.

Pros

The work life balance is amazing. They really put people first and care about thier employees. People have been there for 30 plus years!

Cons

They don't pay very well. The salary starts very low and then when you are promoted expect to get 7% at the most.

Advice to Senior Management

Increase compensation! Encourage people to

Pros

The team I work for is absolutely great.
The benefits are very competitive, and the salaries reasonably so.

Cons

There are no clear guidelines for advancement, and after several years of flawless performance reviews I have received no opportunities to advance.
Everything is very bureaucratic -- you get the impression the company is run by automatons.

Advice to Senior Management

Help current employees advance, rather than looking for outside candidates. There's a lot of unhappiness in the lower ranks because we feel unappreciated, even when we're praised for jobs well done.

Pros

Company is relatively secure financially at a time when many publishers are struggling; has some concern for the well-being of its employees; good benefits esp. by publishing standards; pay is above average for the industry

Cons

There's really no place to go in terms of advancement. Entry-level positions may move up a notch or two (they have in my group), but once you move up a little to more mid-range position you're pretty much stuck for life. What you're doing at 30 or 35 is pretty much what you'll be doing when you're 60. Management is civil but cool and distant--there's a very strict pecking order. I don't expect them to be my new best friends but they're so remote it's a bit creepy, almost robotic. Pay isn't great, esp. by metro NY standards, but book publishing is a low-paying industry that's gotten away with it for decades. So I give them credit, but the bar's been set rather low by the industry.

Advice to Senior Management

There ought to be some way to move up for those not in sales or marketing or technology. Most people I know who've left do so not so much because of any major grievance but out of sheer boredom after a few years (excluding the NYers who burn out on the schlep to Hoboken)