Pros
Good toilet facilities, clean and comfortable offices, free tea and coffee. Some flexibility for working mothers. Liberal dress code. Convenient location. Some teams are quite friendly, although this varies. Outdoor spaces for eating lunch available on site are a genuine perk on a sunny day.
Cons
A very profitable publishing company that continues to pay editorial roles meagre salaries. A fresh faced trainee in marketing straight out of a mediocre uni will probably be getting paid more than you, even though you are producing the content that makes the business all its money. People used to be willing to put up with this for the privilege of working on high quality content with highly qualified people, but with the aggressive business practises of launching ever more journals, they will now hire pretty much anyone, and since Springer have taken over quality is being sacrificed for the sake of corporate greed - so both these privileges are on the wane, if not already lost. The situation is worsened by much of the genuine editorial talent having jumped ship, being replaced with inexperienced underqualified newbies who rapidly rise up the ranks to fill the gaps, without having learned the trade. Also: Total lack of meritocracy in career progression. I personally was bullied out of the company by less qualified, less experienced and less talented seniors, in a process where no evidence was ever produced against me and demonstrable lies were said about my work - the story then shifted to no longer questioning my work but questioning my attitude for objecting to lies being told about my work. Kafkaesque! And sadly far from a unique experience - I know of severral colleagues who experienced similar. Finally, there is a strong anti-female gender bias in career advancement: women fill the more junior roles, but it's mostly men at higher levels.
