If you decide to work for Business Wire, expect:
- Minimal sick days. Additionally, managers are very reluctant to let you take any time off for doctors appointments etc. They will ask you to rearrange or take it as holiday. Expect to be harassed with phone calls when you're off sick.
- They give you the UK legal minimum of annual leave - 20 days plus the 8 bank holidays. Which is better than that afforded to the US offices (5 days of paid leave).
- The pay is meagre for what they expect of you, and less than that offered by their competitors. Despite that, the work itself requires a huge amount of care, focus and attention to detail. Business Wire accepts nothing less than perfection from its employees and is willing to pay you something in the low 20Ks to do so.
- Expect to be talked down to as if you and your fellow editors are idiot children. Expect to be micromanaged to within an inch of your life while simultaneously having no support when things actually do go wrong (which they will, pretty much every day).
- You will be working with an ancient system which frequently crashes or otherwise doesn't do what it is meant to, and when this happens, you will spend considerable time trying to work around it while contacting various IT techs to troubleshoot while also fielding calls from concerned and/or angry client. Lots of fun.
- The work itself is the worst aspects of retail, data entry and working a production line combined. It isn't necessarily difficult, but there is a huge amount of information to remember in order to be able to handle whatever comes your way. Some days it will be tedious and just about doable, other days it will be so manic you won't get a chance to actually finish anything.
- Business Wire is particularly stingy towards its employees. Expect to pay for Christmas parties, work treats, evenings out. Employees are expected to pay for their own tea, milk and coffee. The tap water, however, is free.
- The London office is made up of unhappy employees and incompetent managers who deliberately ignore the atmosphere, the concerns of anyone below themselves and the various problems that the company has as a whole and the London office has in particular.
- Music is banned. Mobile phones are banned. Noise of any sort is frowned upon, as is talking about anything other than work. Ironically for an internet-based company, the internet is blocked for editors, making many aspects of the job very difficult. Ostensibly the internet ban is for security reasons, in reality it's because management thinks it makes you more productive. It doesn't.
- Once you're in, it's exceedingly difficult to leave, not least because it is Business Wire policy to not give references for ex-employees, no matter what your job title was out how long you were there. Which makes things pretty difficult - as most Brits know, refusing to give a reference in this country is akin to giving a bad reference. Hypocritically, they will expect at least three references for new hires and will call all of them and follow up with them rigorously.
