Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Employee Reviews about "people"

Pros

Many people working hard every day to make a difference in the lives of teachers and children everywhere.

Cons

Nothing to report here about HMH.

Pros

People that I work with are great people and we really work as a team. We publish excellent material and it is a pleasure to do the work.

Cons

It is a great place for new hires and not so much for the people that have been there a long time. Loyalty means very little as well as institutional knowledge.

Pros

The actual 'worker bees' are great people and truly want to do the best they can. That kind of mind set builds team spirit and friendships that pull together.

Cons

Upper management makes choices and decisions based on spreadsheets and matrix. They really don't understand the full business from the ground up - they only know how Excel spreadsheets work and how to read bottom line totals. HMH keeps hiring "MBA" type mangers who feel that good decision making can come from any background or business. So what's happening at HMH is that upper management doesn't understand how their decisions and choices play-out down below where the "worker bees" are getting slammed and are working in circles and not making headway.

Pros

Nearly everyone at HMH is nice and reasonable. You will find almost no other company where people are more polite and respectful of each other. You get to work on real, tangible product (textbooks) and learn about how they get to the market.

Cons

The company's massive layers of management is absolutely afraid to make a decision about anything. This is not unique to this company, most middle managers fear decision making, but it is far more prevalent here. Delivering mediocre product is totally preferred over fighting for change. Talented staff are held back by out of touch non-technical management.

Pros

Great colleagues. Opportunities to learn. The company invests in making it a great place to work.

Cons

Good people leaving which means more work on those left while new hires are got and coning on board

Pros

Well for starters it's a good learning experience for anyone who has never worked in the corporate world before. It's fairly easy to get a job with them and maintain it and many of the employees are former teachers from all grade levels. Pay is decent but I am aware of some issues of some managers offering equally qualified people vastly different pay amounts for the same job. Benefits are decent with several different options but the truly good options can be a bit expensive but that appears to be the norm most places. You will work with some good people who are doing and want to do good things for the community.

Cons

Overall poor management. Non management employees are allowed to have a say and make decisions on things they have no business in making hoping that it will make them look good later on and there are usually several people like this on ever project and they usually contradict each other. This usually results in no clear path or concept and there never seems to be a clear decision maker. I'm sure it's because no one really wants to take responsibility for anything if it goes wrong. This usually results in lots of finger pointing from everyone at everyone but themselves. Naturally this creates a very negative environment about being able to gain the upper hand and throw people under the bus later. It's not a hard situation to avoid as it's obvious from the start who the main culprits are but after dealing with it every day for several years it will start bringing you into that negativity they generate. You will be on the phone all the time. It doesn't matter what your job is or what job you are currently on or if your deadline is coming up. There is meeting after meeting after meeting and it never seems to end. You will be on countless phone meetings that have absolutely nothing to do with your skill set, job, or anything you are currently working on or have worked on before and it really bogs down your time. Be prepared to do the usual corporate brown nosing if you even want to be considered for a promotion of any kind. This is very much a corporate environment and you have to play the political game despite the "we are all a family" here nonsense they spin constantly.

Pros

The people are fantastic and are more than willing to help you anyway that they can. The pay is good but the true value in working here as an intern is the experience.

Cons

This is a personal preference but sitting all day is KILLER. It took no time for me to realize that I am not cut out for a desk job. The ergonomics of this job are hard on the wrists and the back.

Pros

Nice offices in central Dublin. Eventual social events to boost morale and hang out with work colleagues. UI team works with the latest JS frameworks. Most people in the company and specially in the software engineering team are amazing and very friendly. For that reason, it was one the best work environments I've worked in by far.

Cons

Loads of bureaucracy to get some things done. Some departments are over staffed while other lack enough people to get things done which will impact you - I'm talking about the technology/software engineering department, can't say anything in this regard about the rest of the company. Lots of periods of inactivity makes the software developers frustrated and for this reason there's a high turn over. No one was to sit there doing nothing. It's boring. Projects retire in favour of new versions and suddenly all the effort and hard work you put into a project means nothing. So you get stuck with the old project while other team - usually an agency - gets to work on the new and shiny stuff. Not fair!

Pros

I was proud of the products and services that we produced and the positive impact they had on education in the community. This is a good company for getting started in publishing and a lot of opportunity to learn and grow. There are many opportunities for those who take them.

Cons

The company culture is not very good and it's not a 'fun' place to work. There are a lot of people who have worked there for 20+ years and are very resistant to change. People who work long hours instead of 'smart' hours are rewarded. For a company that is trying to market itself as a technology company there was a lot of behind the scenes manual work being done on spreadsheets and post it notes. As a manager I spent 90% of my day in meetings, this company loves meetings. It's a very old school company and a lot of good people end up leaving.

Pros

Great co-workers, lots of talented individuals, meaningful work, opportunity to give back to the community and descent benefits.

Cons

For a 100+ year old company, they cannot get their act together. It's unbelievable how disconnected everything is. Communication is lacking and many times contradictory. There are so many constant changes in the organizational structure that it seems like they are trying to re-invent themselves every 4-6 months. Lay-offs are commonplace and people are quitting left and right because they are doing the work of 3 people. Not a healthy environment to work in.