Investors Business Daily Reviews

Pros

Terrific people and great hours.

Cons

Newspaper in a tough industry.

Pros

Flexible work environment that has its perks

Cons

none currently at the moment

Pros

Decent-to-good salary and benefits. Some amount of autonomy given to team leads. Always work to keep you busy. Interesting subject matter (stock market data). Relatively trouble-free work with peers.

Cons

My boss was kind of "my way or highway", but has limited technical knowledge. Also was not a "people manager". Some randomness to layoffs, use temp downturns as an excuse to cut experienced, higher-paid, long-term employees.

Advice to Management

So close, but yet so far. You guys have good vision, but you need to reward your employees more with both monetary and non-monetary recognition and profit sharing. Loosen the chains a bit.

Pros

Some of the nicest people you'll ever meet in the news business work here. You'll learn a ton about the stock market, business trends and economics. By journalism standards, the pay is pretty good. Management treats employees with respect. There are quite a few long-time employees there, which speaks highly of the company's culture.

Cons

After mass layoffs last year (40% of staff got pink slips), the company is operating on bare-bones staff, which is overworked. The benefits aren't good -- stingy with vacation/sick time, no matching 401(k) and high deductibles for health insurance. The paper also is about a decade behind the times in terms of SEO, social media, etc. A California-based newspaper that covers the stock market means very early daily start...

Advice to Management

Focus more on scoops and breaking news and less on charts. Also, please do a better job of keeping up with changing technology trends in the news business.

Pros

The people are easy to get along with and nice for the most part.

Cons

The management is very stuck in their ways and run the place like a post office. They were years behind on jumping on SEO and didn't listen to advice from staff about how to make the website better and drive more traffic. Thus newer websites surpassed them and left them in the dust.

Advice to Management

You have to stay on top of the latest online trends and adjust your strategy accordingly. Tactics used to grow in the 1980s will not necessarily work in the 2010s.

Pros

Laid back office, pretty good benefits and pretty easy job.

Cons

No 401k match , sometimes can be overwhelming as management expects one person to do the job for 5 since the company let go of half the staff.

Advice to Management

Listen more to employees, hire more people to help. Match 401k

Pros

There's a relatively flat hierarchical structure, meaning you have easy access to upper management. Most "promotions" are lateral, which exposes you to wide ranging aspects of the business. You can learn a lot about all kinds of parts of the business. But it's a challenge getting promoted into a higher position.

Cons

It's hard to move up because the people in upper positions are mostly, fairly entrenched. If you want to move into a higher position, you almost have to create that new position yourself. If you're good at politics, this is the place for you.

Advice to Management

Create more transparency when it comes to the various positions available. Let any employee who thinks he/she has the skills for a position, know, and apply, for that position. It's great bringing in new talent, but it's a big morale booster if everybody knows that they can move ahead at the company....not just the insiders...or outsiders.

Pros

I worked for Investors Business Daily for 15 years , and I can honestly say that I enjoyed my time with the company. IBD provides a great training ground for learning about the US economy , world economy and the US Stock Market. The company is ethnically diverse with a business casual work environment.

Cons

The company is no longer growing and, layoffs are common place. They don't offer a matching 401K and the health insurance has a high deductible.

Advice to Management

Open up the lines of communication between non management employees and management.