PRIMEDIA Reviews

Pros

The pay is good. The company is continuing to grow. The benefits are good . They promote growth within the company.

Cons

My job is not that challenging. I could use more a challege on a day-to-day basis. Other than that things are good.

Advice to Senior Management

My advise to management would be to keep doing what they are doing. It seems to be working. If it's not broken, why try to fix it?

Pros

I have been provided with opportunities to excel and be rewarded for my efforts. National company with large footprint, so opportunities are good.

Cons

Short ladder to top, Directors tend to live and die in their positions. Close minded to new ideas and procedural changes.

Advice to Senior Management

Horrible communicators as to the direction the company is headed in. Some procedures are still in the stone ages, so there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Pros

Excellent way to self brand yourself in your market opening the doors to better opportunities. Excellent pay and benefits. Top notch training on all the new innovative technology. I was proud to work for PRIMEDIA because they truly were the Industry leader. We were able to back up every promise we made to our clients.

Cons

Policies and rules constantly change leaving employees disheartened and confused. Management talking negatively about employees to employees. No real support when we needed to handle everyday issues and objections.

Advice to Senior Management

Take better care of your employees and I promise they will take care of you. Out of all the sales/account executives I met while working with Primedia, not a single one had anything good to say about mgmt. My goal was to help PRIMEDIA succeed, and instead all of my hard efforts left me feeling disheartened and confused. I was recently discharged and I am still confused as to why. Communication is horrible, there is never a clear understanding on anything. All in all though, I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for PRIMEDIA. I've made a difference in my market and I am now capable of moving on to bigger and better things.

Pros

Very strong professional and business standards as well as employee oriented.

Cons

The business is been affected by changes in the industry and the growth of the internet.

Advice to Senior Management

They are aware

Pros

Great co-workers that care about the work they perform.

Cons

Promotions and jobs created out of thin air for friends of management. No diversity in the management ranks.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider 360 feedback.

Pros

It can be a fun, laid-back environment with good work-life balance.

Cons

Sometimes it felt more like high school than a professional organization. Some members of the management team were pretty immature.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to be more connected with their employees. It seems pretty clear they aren't interested in creating a culture of teamwork. Also, middle management needs to act more mature.

Pros

The people in the field and support and middle management in the Corporate Headquarters are second to none. They are a talented, hard working group of people who deseve to be treated with respect.

Learned alot about what not to do as a member of management of any organization and was reminded about how NOT to treat people as a pier, or manager. Also, learned how to overcome adversity.

Cons

From Regional Sales Manager and up, this organization has no knowledge about how to manager their field. They manage from a position of fear and bullying. It's a shame that the people who work in the field and produce revenue for this company are the ones who get the short end of the stick and are completely underappreciated. The Regional for one part of the country is a bully and will cut who ever this person needs to at the knees to make sure that they are never found out to be the incapable manager that they really are. There is so much turnover in this organization and it's all because of the basic arrogance of upper management. They cut the entire field support team and now it's all about being aa's instead of sales people. Best thing that can happen is that the company get broken into pieces now that it's sold so people can actually sell advertising again instead of being held to an impossible standard

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to basics and make it up to the people who make money for this company....YOUR SALES FORCE

Pros

Primedia has many things going for it from a technology side - Agile methodology, edgy software, stateless (supposedly) websites and good technology resources.

Cons

Most of the advantages of having an Agile working environment are illusory - it's talked about rather extensively but the realities are that the mid-level management resource hired to implement Agile was axed in the latest round of layoffs, for good reason. The mandates towards how agile should work are inflexible and each team strives as best as it can. Instead of coming together to get each story done in the iteration, often the efforts devolve into arguments about how something can't or won't work. Lots of name calling and bullying going on and the attitude towards the various departments ancillary to the current dev is full of bullying and name calling. I'm not sure how anything gets done by the time user stories are discussed. Way too much CYA here and no help from your manager if anyone comes hunting.

A good development environment starts with whomever is ultimately using the application and works backwards - at Primedia you're stuck implementing pie-in-the-sky ideas that have not been fully proven by analyst in regards to success and ROI. At Primedia it's all about the numbers - divided about equally between generating lead counts and generating click-views for banner advertisers (even though this latter is a much smaller portion). Much of the effort is ultimately wasted.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire good people and strive to keep them - the attitude that eveyone is expendable is killing Primedia's most important resource.

Pros

Good pay
Great benefits
Company's technological resources are improving
Great and easy product to sell!

Cons

I gave over 8 years of my professional career to Primedia. At first, it was the ultimate job. I was promoted twice in less than a year and a half and senior management, my boss, and other co-workers and colleagues really depended on my input and advice. I sunk my life into the daily workings of our office and I thought I'd be here forever! The pay was great, benefits were awesome, and it certainly was one of the best jobs I had ever had.

Then we got a new CEO and senior Admin began sending us "surveys" of how each market's admin team spent their time doing their jobs. A few months after that we noticed that some of our responsibilities were being allocated to people in corporate and even given back to the sales people. Eventually we had very little repsonsibility and duties, while the sales people, who should have been selling, spent most of their time in front of their laptops doing data entry, contract creation, and ad creation, none of which should be their jobs.

The kick in the pants began when Mr. Stubbs decided to create a centralized billing & collections department in the corporate office. The last few strings were being pulled away from local admin, and the layoff notifications were given out. A majority of the Administrative Assistants by this point were let go.

I am still in touch with several sales execs that are with the company. Besides morale being lower than it ever has been before, and getting worse by the day, the centralized department in corporate is "incompetent", "terrible", "the worst" and "horrible". More errors have been made than with the local admin staff.

What truly makes me completely disheartened about this company is that Mr. Stubbs and Senior Management believe that all Admin ever did was a)answer phones b)bill clients c) finalize contracts and d) collect on past due money. If he decided to actually spend time with some Admin he'd realize that there was so much more to our jobs than they know. We always went beyond our job descriptions to help the sales staff and other admin staff when needed, but it was never recognized. Easily replaced by poorly trained people who never answer the phone when you need to contact them.

Advice to Senior Management

Value the qualities of each employee. While everyone is replaceable to some extent, that doesn't make them worthless. Morale is at an all time low. Visit any local office and you'll find that out. While local management is great, staying in your corporate office really allows you to lose sight of the bigger picture across the country. Why not send out an anonymous survey and listen to your sales teams. You might be surprised at their answers.

Pros

-Generous benefits, time-off
-Good work environment
-Smart people
-Solid products
-Strong HR department
-Positive work/personal life balance
-Good communications from the top

Cons

-Employee turn-over due to economy and industry pressures
-Limited communication from levels other than senior management

Advice to Senior Management

-Continue to improve employee morale by recognizing employees and continuous communication from all levels