Pros
Ability to work remotely, even before COVID-19 pandemic shift to all working remotely Close communication with CEO possible Bright, talented colleagues
Cons
All ABIS work centers around what the news team does, but that team is chronically undermined and overworked. In the last few years, several more editors have left the news team than have been hired and stayed, creating more work for the rest of the team as the amount of work done in the morning did not decrease with each loss. Coverage needs continued to grow especially with COVID-19-related news volume increases, given most of the news briefs are pharmaceutical-related, but there was no system in place to ease the burden on news team editors. There were also no COVID bonuses, and there is no regular performance review process in place. If you want a raise, you will have to chase it, and you often don't get to talk to management about where you are going at ABIS unless you take the initiative to schedule a meeting with Ian, the CEO. And if you get a raise, good luck getting more than the 1$/hour "bump" the CEO feels comfortable with. Ian's a great guy on a personal level, but he has trouble delegating and tries to stay plugged into the daily news publishes. However, since he is not fully involved in that routine, he is often out of touch with the process and yet will overrule editors, who are supposedly trusted to lead their respective spaces, if he feels the coverage should be different. This leads to a lot of confusion and frustration, and it makes the editors feel undermined. If a client or upper management decides something should be covered, it never matters if that specific editor disagrees, so you start to wonder if the responsibility they give you over a given space is a farce. Incentives to do good work are few and far between, and praise is limited to a shout out during a weekly team meeting if you have a certain edit rate. The edit rate system is severely flawed, because if you happen to have a handful of easy stories to write up in a given day, or you work with forgiving proofers, you'll likely end up on that list all the time, while others are penalized for work in more challenging areas or for simply having more anal proofers grade their work. Certain colleagues are very passive-aggressive as well, immediately CC'ing upper management for story corrections when there is no need to escalate the issue on a routine slip-up. The edit rate system contributes to this often toxic environment, as editors seem to compete to catch others' mistakes. If you do well, you get a shout out at the team meeting or maybe a rare client compliment (which doesn't mean much - they don't know who any of us are on the news team since they communicate only to the client relations team). However, if you do poorly, every mistake is tracked, every minute of work logged, and quality projects put another close lens on your mistakes at a time when quality is already difficult to maintain given the unreasonable workload on editors in the mornings - going back to the staffing issue. It's like burning a candle at both ends - editors are expected to handle more work than ever before with COVID news increases paired with a dwindling staff number, while simultaneously providing the highest quality work on strict deadlines. DAILY. It's exhausting and unsustainable. If a few more editors leave ABIS, more would likely leave as a consequence, and ABIS cannot afford to lose more of its news team. Yet, they show no effort to show current team members their work is appreciated. At least give them a bonus for all the extra work they handle (very well) during the pandemic...it would be 10x better than the box of pears everybody got as a Christmas present in 2020.