I am not one to disrespect former employers: in my 20+ years in the corporate world, I've never said "I hated that place!"
Why?
Because I've learned something useful (or a lot of "something useful") at every single company I've worked at.
Yes, even the bad ones.
Well, you know what? Here's a first:
I absolutely hated working at this company.
Given this, take the below into account before you decide to pursue a position at Live Nation:
THE PEOPLE:
Sure, there were (and still are) some good, intelligent, well-meaning people there. Some of these folks are even a pleasure to work with! But they are outnumbered by the clueless, egotistical jerks working their way up the ladder as well as those (supposedly) running the place (into the ground?).
THE MANAGEMENT:
Live Nation gets one star because I did get paid a salary and benefits. But the management team was _the worst_ I've worked for EVER, from my two direct managers on up to Rapino (the guy acted like he was doing us all a favor on the quarterly all-hands calls, and when he didn't like questions the employees were asking, he'd let them know in a very snide way; clearly, this guy and the rest of his lieutenants do not get that the front-line employees are your company and revenue stream's life's blood and are the ones building for the future AND serving your customers. Simply put: they were -- and I suspect still are -- CLUELESS.)
I've been gone from this place for a few years now and I see in the business news when quarterly earnings come out that they STILL have not turned a profit!
WORK-LIFE BALANCE:
What about work-life-balance? Forget about it! I hope you're single without a family, because you won't have much time for family life. You will be checking your company-issued Blackberry (or maybe they give out iPhones now?) at all hours of the day and night waiting for the next disaster to arrive that you'll have to deal with due to how operationally immature this company is. The management expects you to work ungodly hours to complete projects. A former colleague of mine (who I actually really respect) recently posted on Facebook about working 7-day weeks for a few weeks to complete a project -- so glad I am not there anymore.
TL;DR (KEY TAKEAWAY): It may seem sexy on the outside to work at Live Nation, and I am HUGE music fan, but trust me: if you are hell-bent on working the music industry, DO SOMETHING ELSE rather than work here! This place almost killed my love of music due to all the B.S. that went down while I was there....
Look, if Irving Azoff left the company, what does that tell you?
