Pearson Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

-good work-life balance -not much politics at the lower levels -mostly female middle managers and they care about being good managers -mostly good people who want to do a good job 9-5 -great location (Copley Square) -if you are someone that wants to work sincerely, but not super crazy like in a tech startup, this is a good place -despite the bad rap Pearson gets, some products are really cool and there are some very smart people who work there

Cons

-upper management is men. Folks, if you believe the glass ceiling doesn't exist in corporate America, come to Pearson.. where 80% of the employees are women but upper management is 90% men! -upper management is clueless and arrogant -hire managers from outside instead of promoting the ones in the company -frat boy culture in upper management -strategy keeps changing (read--no strategy)

Pros

Pearson embraced remote work and telecommuting long before the current pandemic made it necessary. My local team (onboarded from a predecessor company, Connections Education) was a fantastic group of people with an excellent manager, which is why I stayed as long as I did.

Cons

Layoffs are business as usual for them, as they ship jobs from the US overseas. There is also constant shuffling of upper management. As a result, they roll out new initiatives before ever fully implementing the one before - which often leads to more layoffs. In the past year, my local team when from 4 to 3 to 2, and is now down to 1. Pearson is more concerned with their bottom line than with properly supporting its businesses, and as a result their bottom line suffers. Leading to, you guessed it, more layoffs.

Pros

Great talented people doing everything they can do to drag a high-and-mighty better than thou management team. The companies mission for education is its saving grace.

Cons

Constantly transforming, never getting there. Upper Management is driven by cost cutting with very limited concern for employee careers.

Pros

My co-workers were absolutely the best. I even enjoyed working with my manager!

Cons

My division was working toward bringing a lot of traditional print products into the digital world. I was there three years and during that time every "town hall meeting" we had was mostly bad news. Upper management seemed to bumble through the digital transformation. We consistently missed division goals and there were always small layoffs. One month we'd be told the goals and direction we'd be taking and three months later it would almost completely change. Then came the announcement of a 20% across the division layoff. The results were staggering. We lost a lot of great people, some employed with Pearson for over 18 years! We had several co-workers 5-6 years from retirement just cut loose. You can imagine hard it is for a 60-year-old employee to find a job! My manager was in tears giving us the news. They did offer outplacement, but they were not very useful. I'd stay away unless they get on track.

Pros

Good company if you like knowing exactly what you're supposed to do and what your role is . Middle management is good at helping out if you need help. Only have to worry about work at work and there is nothing to take home. Offered potential promotion quickly.

Cons

Not a lot of leeway to make decisions (upper management gets to decide a lot) , sometimes the scoring can be vague and not always up to you to decide.

Pros

General attitude of employees was great. People were supportive of each other. Great network of knowledge and overall willingness to help.

Cons

Upper Management. Completely out of touch with what is actually going on. Favorites were played. HR was a BIG problem especially at the VP level.

Pros

Coworkers were great--passionate about putting out the best content for our customers, eager to work hard, friendly, kind, and ready to help out. Benefits are pretty good, and work-life balance is a high priority. Good severance packages.

Cons

Upper management has thoughtlessly decimated content teams in SF to pay for (mediocre for the area) software engineer salaries, which they're hiring desperately to meet end-of-the-year goals for Pearson's new platform. Goals that will be missed, and probably result in stockholders shutting down the company. Even if the platform goes live, there will be no new state-of-the-art content to fill it, and customers will not be happy. Prospective software engineers beware--perks are bad, with few paid lunches, a sad spread of snacks, and mediocre tools. Slack is being phased out to be replaced with Microsoft Teams by Fall.

Pros

The sales teams have great culture and great management on the lower levels. Compensation is strong, and there is opportunity to travel. I've had some of the best managers and mentors here, as well as peers. Job could be very rewarding at times.

Cons

The learning curve is insane. It takes 4 months to get a good handle on this job. Upper management is very weak, and has been putting the sales force through reorgs/layoffs every single year since 2013. It seems like they're unable to stick with a business strategy for more than a year before tearing it down and trying again a year later with a different strategy. Any reps still loyal to the company are then expected to beg for the remaining scraps of jobs. The volume of incoming work is very high, making it hard to balance with your expectation to hunt for new business.