Stay Away - These reviews are not exaggerating.
Pros
People are all in the same boat as you, so there's a small sense of community between co-workers, but not between departments and not between managers. Everyone stays in their own bubbles.
Cons
When I started in 2016, this company was really great. Everyone really loved their jobs and did their jobs well. The customer service was off the hook amazing. Everyone really worked as a team. Management has always been bad and has had questionable judgment. There were some that would watch Netflix all day in the office, for example. There was a lot of harassment and backstabbing from other management. But it was a really pleasant environment to work with. The company always had a smaller branch in the UK. The person that ran that branch ran it for 10 years before he was offered the job of CEO, as the current CEO was retiring and needed a replacement. They assumed that someone who ran the UK branch successfully would be able to come in and run both USA and UK markets successfully. While he's done great work for the UK, it became abundantly clear the CEO job was way above his skillset. His initial job was to save the company money (while he and upper management got raises and bonuses) and so he came in every 3 weeks or so for just long enough to fire 10-15 people at a time. In the end, he fired a little over half the company and every time there were layoffs would hold a huge meeting and lie to everyone about wanting to hire new people, create more jobs and basically blame the problems of the company on bad incompetent workers. It always irked me that when he made the trip to the US he clearly splurged. He flew first class, and often flew a few of his UK management over as well, he rented only expensive vehicles to drive around while he was in the US, (BMW's, Masserati, etc to name a few) and stayed at fancy hotels - he and those under him from the UK, stayed at least 30 minutes away from the office, because the hotels near Lake Forest were not fancy enough. That just doesn't seem like someone who's trying to save money. People who stayed were offered pay decreases and had to give up an office if they had one - for no apparent reason. They later gave those offices to UK counterparts. The CEO has only promoted people only in the UK and has created a fear-driven, gossipy, unhappy environment. Everyone is expected to come in at 7 am regardless of their commutes (which can be up to 4 hours for some.) No one is allowed to work from home (something that was permissible before.) In an open space concept office, they don't even allow you to wear headphones while you work on work that requires maximum concentration (something that was permissible before.) It was not uncommon to see people having meltdowns in other's offices, or crying in the bathrooms. In the 2 years I was there, raises and promotions were rare and kept extremely hush-hush. Often you didn't know someone had been promoted for months, and you were never given a raise unless you practically begged for it and cited having family issues or some kind of problem. Opportunities to rise were also extremely rare, they often hired from the outside not promoted from within. It was never a merit-based system - it was a "favored" based system. Lots of nepotism. Regardless of that, the company is clearly going down. This company used to sell in big box stores like Michael's and Hobby Lobby and now those stores seldom carry product for Ellison/Sizzix. A quick google search will also reveal that they are suing their former VP of marketing and former licensed designers and brands they worked with. It seems really clear that at least in the USA - this company is trying hard to close its doors, burn bridges and move it's operations solely to the UK.
