Pros
- Some managers are blessed by upper management, have control of businesses with clear growth strategies, and a relatively free hand to drive those businesses forward -- if you can get into those parts of Wiley, you can have a spectacular career. - Benefits and work-life balance are legendarily strong. Pay is also decent for publishing, particularly if you come from the more consumer-focused end of the business. - Office culture is still very pleasant, despite some hits from the layoffs of the last three years. - Paternalism has ebbed a bit, which can be a pro or a con depending on your viewpoint. - Is a global leader in a lot of its businesses, and has many very strong partners. You can have the opportunity to work with top leaders in major fields globally. - Hoboken location is convenient to transit, has gorgeous views, and the office spaces are mostly pretty nice. (Showing some wear, definitely, and the upcoming redesign -- darkly threatened to be all-panopticon, all-the-time -- will correct some of that, but introduce new problems, as always happens.)
Cons
- Wiley is made up of silos packed into silos divided by silos. Each of the three main businesses runs essentially independently, each local office does things its own way, and each publisher or product line has very definite idiosyncrasies. The concept of applying a single best practice across the entire organization, or even having a clear functional structure across the organization, is anathema. To succeed at Wiley, you must be adept at understanding the Byzantine structure and using it to achieve your goals. - Upper management claims to have a clear strategy, but their communication to the staff has been vague and contradictory for several years now. Perhaps they have a strategy at any given moment, but consistency and long-range planning do not seem to be available. The CEO's health issues probably feed into this, unfortunately. - They seem to have entered a period of managing to quarterly results, which is never a good sign. Layoffs in particular are triggered by an upcoming unfavorable quarter-end. Similarly, reorganizations are beginning to blur together into a continuous panic of change and fear. - A successful career can greatly depend on who you know and who your allies are: you need to be immediately useful to the people who are immediately useful to the senior managers who will be kept on and rewarded with the next pending reorg, and navigating that path is not clear.