Pros
- Fancy job title might look good on resume - People outside Vancouver might still have a positive view of the organization due to lack of exposure to former employees - Co-workers excluding the boss are generally good people
Cons
- Boss openly admits to racist and sexist discrimination when hiring. - Boss will do cartoonishly nasty things like shoot down your idea one day and then present it as his own the next, will fire people on a whim and lie about why, will get childishly mad at you for explaining flaws in his ideas, will sulk around muttering loudly about you within earshot if he's got a bone to pick with you that day. - Boss has no scruples with hiring and will bring total creeps, sex pests and violent alcoholics into the group if he finds them personally fun to hang out with. - Boss will steal art and written work for publication without permission or attribution in the magazine, getting you caught up in bad blood with artists and writers. - Boss has final say over everything in the magazine including inserting his surprisingly regressive editorializations (e.g. he is very anti-feminist and "pro-life", which ironically would upset the vast majority of his readers). Getting into political, strategic or artistic debates with him will lead to your dismissal for some other made up reason. Silently executing his will is really your best hope for holding a job here. - Boss is prone to being influenced by people who are able to charm him. This is only temporary for reasons already mentioned but can lead to the entire organization being commandeered by some mad scientist videographer, drunk art historian or other con artist before they inevitably fall out. - Skeleton crew. Everyone has multiple, undefined roles. There is no organization or systems or standards whatsoever. There is no HR dept to complain to. - Pay is absurdly low, designed to generate extremely high turnover. The boss prefers to hire volunteers and interns because they are temporary by nature. - Due to high turnover over decades, they have an infamously bad reputation among Vancouver creatives. Everyone knows someone who has an unpleasant story from a doomed stint at Adbusters. - Job titles seem fancy (e.g. "Art Director", "Web Director") but do not translate to similar roles at other companies and may actually make your resume look unserious.
