Complete shambles - Anonymous employee Pearson Employee Review

2.0
15 Feb 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Can't think of anything positive at this point

Cons

Over the eighteen months I worked at Pearson there were 3 restructures. A digital company with employees who don't know how to full screen a Chrome window (these same staff members survived the 3 restructures due to seniority.) Absolutely no thought out strategy. Few promotions or salary increases. No forum to raise ideas with no incentives to take initiative. Junior staff members were treated like they were on apprenticeships. There was no system for bringing ideas or revenue saving strategies, because the 1000s of VPs and Directors had such inflated egos and arrogance to listen to lower staff. Money was regularly being haemorrhaged on digital initiatives, decided by people who didn't know what digital was, and the more agile part of the workforce who understood how to code had 0 input in to these terrible business ideas. Pearson bought an outdated ERP system without asking any employees what their requirements were as users, leading to a completely messed up procurement and finance system. Training opportunities, development, and talent retention was completely non existent. 1000s of VPs, SVPs, and Directors, but consistent cuts to junior staff. By the time I survived the third restructure I was doing the work of several departments with no pay increase. This was because the business had cut so many people without any plan to fill the gaps and expected the staff to pick up the slack. The salaries were nowhere near industry competitive, I received a 30% pay increase working at a competitor in a less turbulent environment. Instead of pay increases you would get empty job titles such as "champion" Avoid working at Pearson at all costs. Many people suffered from health issues as a result of restructures, no pay increases, and increased workload. I would be surprised if John Fallon survives another 6 months.

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Pros

Smart people, supportive environment and good benefits

Cons

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2.0
31 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Remote, $2300 a month for not that many hours of work.

Cons

The widespread incoherence of Pearson is irritating me to a significant degree. -the hiring committee mentioned the wrong pay rate so I spent a month worrying about money -the payroll agency shared the actual pay rate which was sustainable ($2,300 a month, my bills are $1,800, $2,100 with your fee baked in. - I procrastinated this week because I didn't know how to read the bureaucratese on the assignment - I figured out how to read the bureaucratese and went back to K. saying, I think I've developed something genuinely useful as a reference material for new employees. I had to synthesize information from 100 pages of PowerPoints into a two page document which cleared up the anxiety I had about how to start -can't believe K. and other managers worked as Classroom Teachers because the way they scatter information has no coherence. I had to peruse numerous documents in the SharePoint "cloud" folders, take notes, and develop a master reference document before I could interpret how to develop questions based on the bureaucratese. -I was never the most organized classroom teacher but my students knew what was expected of them. I put dates on assignments that were linear and in a consecutive sequence of beginning of week, midweek, end of week. If students had a test, I made a review sheet that was a consolidated 2-7 pages. I would never expect even my Honors students to consult dozens of pages in order to study. -I told K. about the reference document I developed and she met me partway: she recognizes one aspect of the process could be better done, new employees could be more adequately trained on the acronyms we use. That's like 25% of the way to completion. I had to figure out that "Administration 2" means the second half of a course AKA Economics for 5th and 7th graders, and 11E just means 11th grade Economics. But instead of the standards being sorted by subject, they are sorted by grade. Since the standards start with 5 for anything 5th grade, 7 for anything 7th grade, 11 for anything 11th grade, it would be coherent to just combine the standards into one document and organize by subject. -Some companies are smart, caring people trapped inside of bad systems. Like classroom teachers. Pearson feels like a repeat of my last company in its poor design and incoherence but less abusive. H) Pearson assigned us 11 questions in a spreadsheet. I think fewer mistakes would be made if they paid a college student Education major $15 an hour to type up our assignments with the criteria they want for each question. Our time is worth $30-$100 an hour. We are subject matter experts. But comprehending the bureaucratese drains cognitive energy. -I had anxiety about getting all 11 questions produced then K. said, oh you only turn in one question for the first week. Something they never said on the Microsoft Teams meeting we had last Wednesday for onboarding. If I received a sheet with 11 questions in the cloud and my name on it that's what I'm going to think I need to accomplish. But K. put in another email, only submit one question for a week. Email should be subordinate to the cloud, the cloud should supersede email ex. The federal government supremacy clause: federal government has greater authority than state governments. -Spent an hour trying to save the questions I developed in Abbi, only for them not to process and upload. Abbi feels clunky with technical failures of the early internet

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