Good place to work but business is in trouble - Anonymous employee Synapse Group Employee Review

It’s a great place to work.

There are no cons to working here

Free lunch and dinner after 6:30pm, made some great lasting friendships, Learned a lot over the years, great place for young fresh out of school upstarts.

Upper management is disconnected from the main body of employees (it's the Time inc. culture who bought them in 2000). For a small company the CEO struggles to know anyones name except for his direct reports. He also lacks charisma for a CEO and often appears nervous and aloof and looks down at the floor when addressed in passing. Synapse's core business as a magazine subscription agent is failing, no one wants to pay for content that is free on the web, as a result, management is scrambling for the next successful business model to fill the waining paper/digital magazine's shoes. Unfortunately they're grasping at straws by trying to reenter once again another dying business of web-based membership loyalty programs. Synapse has tried this business twice in the past and always runs into the same old issues of trying to get other partners to participate to give the programs some value, which they don't and they fail to launch, unfortunately no one has been there long enough to learn from it's past mistakes, they've let go most of the original employees who know. This company had a great run for 20 plus years, it's been a cash cow for Time Inc. since they bought it, but it's lasting years may be numbered if it can't let go of it's outdated ways of thinking.