Pros
Colleagues were pleasant, for the most part, and intelligent. Corporate benefits were decent, although not lavish. Workers seemed focused on doing their best work.
Cons
Upper management could see the digital age coming for higher education publishing but couldn't figure out how to get there. Because middle managers had bonuses tied to yearly results they were afraid to cut products that were not going to transition well. Because of that, staff time and energy were spent on keeping old products active rather than producing new ones. Then these managers thought that changing the ways these products were produced would solve this problem of clinging to nearly obsolete products. The staff suffered through many iterations of reorganization and contradictory goals. They struggled to keep up while using obsolete backend tools and software that only slowed down new product development. A few years of this had made me depressed and cranky, so I left for better pastures.
