Not a good long-term career path for those just entering the job market.
Pros
You will learn patience. You will learn how to MULTItask. You will learn deadlines mean nothing if you are the right person. You will learn how to blame other departments, authors, agents or outside companies for Harper's shortcomings. You may if lucky learn a few things from some of the talented underappreciated middle managers that shovel this muddle into some meaningful saleable product. If you are interested in being a line editor, there are a few good ones left. You will learn how to sit through meaningless meetings while work builds in your Inbox. You will learn that HR is not there to help the employee. This is really something not taught in college, and it should be. You will get to show your aunt from Ohio the grand staircase when she comes in for the tree lighting. Take away is this is a great starter job, where you will learn survival skills. Do not plan on a 20 year career there and you will be fine. The industry is having an identity crisis so if you can find a better line of work, you might want to reconsider going into publishing.
Cons
Low pay at entry level. Justified by HR as your entry level lack of experience. Catch-22 is should you ever move beyond entry to middle or come in at the middle, upper-management will not want to pay you for your experience. They will fix blame on digital or B&N as the reason,all while never offering to take a pay cut of their own. If you didn't negotiate hard before you were hired on salary, you won't move much beyond. Lack of communication leads to a heavy gossip environment. Hard to watch good hard working employees demoralized or neutered. Recently, several departments were terminated under the ruse that they could reapply for their jobs if they wanted them in NJ. We all wait to see how many of those dozens of employees are actually getting retained many with decades of experience and excellent performance reviews. If you make it more than 3 years and ask for a raise, be prepared to be told you are lucky to have a job.Your workspace will be the size of a bathroom stall at a midtown bar without the high walls and the nice soap.
