No learning and development opportunities, but relaxed office culture - Ontologist Pearson Employee Review

2.0
11 June 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- The office is nice and it is in a good location in Strand. - Free coffee all day and very relaxed office culture. - Everyone was extremely nice and friendly, and certain execs would make intentional effort to interact with employees and form connections. - Very good pension scheme, and other general employee benefits. - Andy (previous CEO, very sound guy) used to randomly walk around the office handing out free ice cream to everyone.

Cons

- There was never any budget for social events, and considering there was quite a big community of young people in the division, it was very disappointing to never really get the chance to network and just socialise. Other large corporate companies organise more extravagant formal events and even smaller quarterly events at the very least, but at Pearson we got "drinks in the park" and the occasional axe throwing. - They do not support the learning and development of their employees. No support and no allowance for employees' upskilling–a huge con, especially for juniors and people in more technical roles. Every time I requested that they purchase a £20 course for me to learn certain things relevant to my work, or approve the installing of a particular (FREE) programme/tech tool on my work laptop to learn how to use for my job, I was always told no. They supposedly never had the budget or the time to "waste" on even discussing this with me. I always felt like I was asking for crumbs and walked on eggshells knowing that I would have to present a strong case every time I was asking for something as simple as a short course or permission to install any tools. I was in a junior position, and constantly showed excitement about the role and the work and always asked to do more because I was hungry to learn. They quite literally cut your wings, which is so very sad, because any employer would be running at the opportunity to have someone so eager on board. Taking that into account, there was little to no career progression and anything related to my work I was proactive about doing, I was not supported at all.

Explore other reviews about Pearson

5.0
22 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart people, supportive environment and good benefits

Cons

Tight deadlines and it gets busy at times

2.0
31 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

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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