-- The culture can be very demoralizing, particularly if you are young, enthusiastic, talented and/or female. If you are none of these things, SourceMedia could well be your ideal workplace.
-- Extremely poor benefits, as many other reviews here have noted. The health care coverage is the worst, yet it is very expensive and gets more expensive every year.
-- No annual raises (and this has been going on since 2008). If you want to try for a raise, you will need to get a job offer from somewhere else. One of the other reviews here says that hard work is rewarded with salary increases, and that is just so incredibly rare it is as close to untrue as you can get without being a bald-faced lie. I know people who have had actual promotions in recent years without ever getting a raise. If you decide to take a job here, negotiate hard on the salary because you cannot count on it going up later -- even if you do get a promotion.
-- Staff morale is low for the most part. It's hard to stay upbeat in this environment. It's not just the salary freezes, layoffs, etc., it's also the fact that smart, creative people feel so marginalized. The lack of resources wears you down too. While many of us like our immediate co-workers, that positive feeling does not extend to the company itself. Only very recently did the company start to make an effort with activities (like having a trivia night), but it feels like so much window dressing. Companies that genuinely care about their employees don't brag about how revenue is way up -- thanks to all of you! -- then in the next breath say, sorry, there will be no raises again this year, and the amount you pay toward your health insurance expenses will be going up too. And we won't say this out loud, but we will be cutting some more people and you will have a heavier workload as a result.
-- The job situation feels tenuous in many departments. Many jobs, and in some cases entire departments, have been outsourced over the past year, often to India. Practically every other week there are at least a few people quietly let go. Often, you don't find out about it until you send someone an email and it bounces back, or you go to look for someone and see that the desk is empty. Then you ask around and find out there was more cost-cutting. It can be very disconcerting. (For those who don't interact much with other departments, it is less noticeable.)
-- Work-life balance gets harder by the day. Even in cases where people leave the office at a decent hour, many, if not most, are taking work home with them.
-- Management often encourages mediocrity, because quality is not as important as getting things done as quickly and cheaply as possible. If you care too much about quality, this can be a hard place to be. Heavy workload and lack of resources require compromises.(But if you can embrace the mediocrity, work-life balance might be less of an issue for you.)
-- There is a strong emphasis on hierarchy here. If you are in a lower position, you will hardly ever get any face time with anyone above your boss. And when credit is given for good work -- which is not a common occurrence -- it generally will be going to your boss, and not to you.
-- Upper management suffers from "confirmation bias" in a big way.
-- Many decisions that directly affect your work are made without anyone ever asking for your input and without any explanation of the rationale behind them. Over time this behavior sends a very loud message that neither your opinion, nor your feelings, matter.