Refinery29 Employee Reviews about "people"

Cons

Where to begin? This company has steadily gone downhill in the two years I’ve been there: - The place has been hemorrhaging money, so now they’re trying to fix the situation by cutting everything from snacks and other office perks to refusing to hand out even a 5% raise. - The salaries are a joke. Influencers are paid a ton, while low-level staffers are paid peanuts. This is a place that launches campaigns encouraging women to negotiate their salaries and ask for a raise, but then tell you they can’t give you one. And the pay disparity between people in the *same role* can go as high as $17K. So much for “equal pay for equal work.” - The lack of communication is part of the culture. You’ll find out about projects, deadlines and other important stuff at the very last minute because no one bothers to communicate between departments. It’s ridiculous. - This place is peak white feminism™. While there’s obviously about 95% women in management and low-level roles, most of them are white and privileged. Which means they’re severe gaps in the way the content, messaging and other things are managed. Launching a thing like Unbothered (which was an idea of the Black women at lower levels, not management) is a step in the right direction. But what about hiring more people of different ethnic, racial, religious backgrounds? Lots of talk about how “radical inclusivity” is part of the company’s values, but it is not put into practice.

Cons

This place is tanking, despite what it seems like from the outside. Yes, the content is pretty great and you'll have some fun creating in but internally, it's horrendous. Terrible choices made by management and executives at the expense of great talent. Huge pay disparity between a lot of people with the same roles/titles/duties. Some get promotions and raises are handed out more than once a year, while others can go above and beyond and get nothing in return. Certain teams have an endless budget for frivolous spending, while others can barely get a few bucks to build team morale. Executives bully their way up the chain to get their way. Major lack of diversity in staff and content - some people care, other people seem to think there are bigger fish to fry. They've also started laying people off, so things don't seem too safe anymore.

Cons

Echoing another review that they prefer anyone who's a 'cool,' pretty 'influencer' over people who are actually smart and good at their jobs. The executives are visually based, including who they hire and promote. Smart people are disregarded for people with designer connections and they do not seem to have a long term strategy. The mission does not get reinforced at the employee level and everyone is competitive. There are also no career trajectories.

Cons

R29 does not practice what it preaches. They talk so much about the importance of women advocating for themselves and taking control of their bodies and mental/physical health, but when their employees do it, we’re told that we should just be grateful for the opportunity to be working there and that there are “limited resources.” In the past, they have published articles about the importance of work-life balance and the detrimental nature of a toxic workplace, but there is zero work-life balance there and the workplace culture is more than toxic. Bosses text you at 11pm, early in the morning, every day of the week including Saturday and Sunday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. Enjoy your “day off!“ Except you still need to constantly be checking email, writing something, publishing content, posting content on social platforms etc. The holiday calendar is abysmal, and you have to jump through 10,000 hoops to get a day off. If you are coming to R29 from a company with any semblance of structure, you will be shocked at how poorly it is run. The HR department is passive aggressive and only has the best interest of the company at heart, not yours. Upper management is terrified to stand up to executives, and the culture of quiet bullying trickles down from the top and seeps into so many parts of management. Higher ups (and HR) are desperately trying to make sure that people don’t find out how bad it is. People working 60, 70, 80, 90 days consecutively not having a day to themselves? That’s wrong. Offering only 5 paid sick days to full time employees? That’s wrong, and also well below the national average. People work from 9:30 to 6:30 (usually 7:00/7:30) and eat lunch at their desks. Nobody encourages you to have a life or interests outside of work. Everyone is competitive and only wants to promote themselves, and it’s not a healthy environment. Internally, it’s not about building women up, it’s about building yourself up so you can leave the company and be in a decent position to go somewhere that values their employees and their employees’ health. Please, look at these reviews. You may think you were offered your dream job at your dream company. It is all surface level. You are better off working for a company that actually cares about its employees, and actually practices its ethics and values internally. There is a difference between 'the hustle' it takes to work in media and an office that literally doesn't care that people are getting sick over the hours they're having to put in. Working in media is hard! But there are media companies that take a lot better care of the people working so hard to make them great.

Cons

I could go on and on about everything negative that I obsereved in my three years at this company but I'll spare you. I will say that this is a place that will promise you far beyond what they will ever actually offer you when it comes to career growth and support. Although built on a wonderfully fluffy and non-specific and somehow apolitical form of feminism, Refinery29 has lost its voice. Once a place that served a genuine purpose, pushed aesthetic boundaries, and had actual SERVICE to its readers, it is now a destintation for the most regurgitated forms of trendy interenet faux-activism and tired obsrevations of cultural milieu. Oh, and they treat their employees poorly but not as poorly as they pay them. All that being said, the bottom line is that the company is suffering which is why they just laid of 8% of its staff and have lost at least 4 C-level executives in the last 18 months. They tried to be more than anyone wanted them to be ( a sickness that all publishing companies currently suffer from). No one wants to subscribe to "the biggest media company for millenial women". We all see through the giant corporations now and what we see is not inspiring, it's depressing.

Cons

Extremely disorganized without a clear mission. I thought it would be more pro-women and supportive, but it's actually cut-throat and has a 'mean girls' culture. It feels like most people leave after less than a year because it's not worth the stress. I used to be a fan, but the company does not reflect what the writing is all about.

Cons

-Need to actively search out and ask people to contribute to certain projects otherwise you will mostly be organizing meetings and ordering lunches. -senior level management pays almost no attention to their interns -no guarantee of full time work after the internship is over

Cons

Nobody gets paid enough there

Cons

- Overall, it's a high school popularity contest - The most incompetent managers are hired. My manager was probably hired because she knew 'the lingo' and the founders thought she was legit. - The majority of the managers lead by intimidation - Some of the people that are promoted into management positions are unqualified and inexperienced. I'm sure if these new managers were to leave R29, they'd be knocked back into their jr level roles. - Benefits are 'meh' and not much time off. - Pay is not equal across the board - some people were breaking their backs making peanuts while others are grossly overpaid to just 'hang out and talk the talk'.