Unsustainable pace and the worst work/life balance in existence - Anonymous Sourcebooks Employee Review

2.0
Jun 15, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

To be honest, I loved the beginning part of my time. I felt like I learned a lot and gained new skills, but that was before the business really took off in "unprecedented times" and made insane strides. Yes, growth is great, but sales doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and staff grew 0% alongside it. So everyone was expected to do 2, 3, 4, or more jobs. And if you didn't? You "weren't passionate enough." Salary, as expected, did not increase with increased responsibilities. Also who is getting paid to write Glassdoor reviews? Those 5-star ones are filled with synergy buzzwords, so be wary.

Cons

Major cons include literally zero balance: management calls you "family" so they can pretend you don't have a family or loved ones outside of work. And that passion you have for books? It will die. No matter how much you love them. They will squash it out of you. You're expected to work so fast, at an unreasonable pace with an unreasonable workload that you cannot create anything to be proud of—you're just trying to keep your head above water. And if you can't keep up? "You are fixed mindset. Try having growth mindset!" Also it's the ruler in useless company-wide meetings that waste everyone's time just so management can pat itself on the back and be performative. The longer I'm gone, the more I realize just how toxic this place was. And I really did love my job for a minute. (I didn't even mention pay, which is abysmal and not even CLOSE to what market rate is, no matter what your department, and when you ask for a raise they say "but you have benefits!" which are also only so-so.)

Explore other reviews about Sourcebooks

5.0
Jun 20, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Incredible managers, great team, genuine openness to growth and learning, meaningful work

Cons

None to speak of at this moment

1.0
Apr 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

In hindsight, I'm not sure if there were any apart from some friendly coworkers.

Cons

I infuriatingly see promotions handed out left and right via LinkedIn, but just know that actually being someone to get to that level means literally grovelling and being lucky enough to be in the good graces of the egotistical CEO. Upper management brown-noses her as their main job, and they will prevent you from any upward mobility if you're not one of her favorites (which seems to be picked based on how much you kiss up to her, and if you keep your own opinions to yourself, and other factors entirely unrelated to your actual performance). Absolutely criminally high monthly healthcare premiums, paired with insanely high deductibles, bare-minimum PTO, and mat leave. HR is a joke and not one HR employee seems to last very long. Salaries are abysmal, even by publishing standards. Most books acquired are bottom-of-the-barrel since they don't pay most of their authors much, and they have to be edited within an inch of their lives to be readable and marketable. I left the industry after this company and have never been happier.

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