Q&A With American City Business Journals Employees

Toxic

It's a boys club, there are the few golden children, everyone else is expendable. Horrible communication from the corporate level, constant support staff turn over and the HR department is a total joke. They need to fire their attorney "VP of HR".

Very good. Very relaxed - too relaxed in many cases. Sometimes leads to downfall with the political game because people work here for many years. Being family run and having family at all levels of the business creates it's own challenges.

Start at 2 weeks, accrues based on tenure.

Very loose. Just give your manager a heads up.

There really isn't promotions. You'd have to either wait for someone to leave the company or move to a different group for a new job.

If you aren't in a "revenue producing position" promotions are far and few between. Even during a re-organization, job titles may change and expectations may change....but salary usually doesn't follow. Usually requires having another job oñ the table and threatening to leave to get any semblance of a promotion (title or salary).

Miserable. Most are looking for other jobs.

Generally very nice. Some cliques, but most everyone is friendly.

Finding a new job, hopefully the Shaw family runs it into the ground so that advance will just sell them to a larger company that can offer more investments in technology and centralized practices.

Health/Life/Dental

Best benefits I've ever had. Medical, dental, vision, 401k match. Declined government benefits from my spouses job in favor of ACBJ.

Agile-fall would be a good description. Scrum shop that has some oddities of waterfall. Most design happens outside of the Sprint, but teams get SOME of a lens into what's being worked on and can provide insight/feedback. And usually there are misses in some scenarios, which causes scope creep or missing features.

Agile. Some design happens waterfall, as the business wants to be more involved, but we are agile. Two week sprints. Quarterly? tech debt sprints. Good process to mix business requests, bug reports and tech debt into sprints. Not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Good. There isn't an onboarding process (per se), but there's a handful that have been around and are usually helpful in guiding new people.

There is almost no verification of technical knowledge. Basically they hire personalities.

PHP and JavaScript

I've experienced both ends, which shows the lack of clearly defined expectations from corporate.

ACBJ's healthcare plan is disappointing as the "out of pocket maximum" is $2,100 for individual (**not a family plan). Having any daily healthcare/medication can become very expensive.

not allowed

Basically impossible, if you're doing a good job.

A joke, there is none. Throw you to the wolves.

I know you want to give two weeks at your prior employer but could you make it less we really need someone here ASAP.

Surviving working for the devil.

Downhill

Events that provide alcohol, because trust me you'll need it.

That I would have been working for a company that only cares about the bottom line, they have no intent on doubling the size of this company by 2020, they are wanting to double PROFITABILITY, staff sizes are continuously shrinking, theirs no real accountability for publishers, they can basically say and do whatever they want.

Fake it until you make it, act like a used car salesman that over promises and under delivers and you'll fit right in.

a week

Slow agonizing process, but you'll likely not see many job postings they like to move their problem publishers/directors around to other markets or promote the "golden boys"

It depends, if you're a woman you can basically wear whatever you want, men are expected to wear shirts/ties.

No