In painful decline with no signs of stopping. - Anonymous employee Alfred Music Employee Review

Alfred sits at the intersection of two dying industries (music and print), and the layoffs (5 in the last 6 years, 2 of which in the last year) don't exactly inspire one's confidence in the long-term success of the company. Given that I'm not sure the company will be around in 18 months, there isn't much of a point to listing all the cons. Nonetheless, here I go. The pay was bad before any of this happened. For most of us, it hasn't gotten better. It's kind of like an open secret that everyone knows and jokes about - pay is nowhere near competitive, even in the traditionally underpaying music industry. They don't even have cost of living raises! What they *do* have is meaningless title changes, which is how you get 20 people with "Vice President" in their title, out of a company with around 150 employees. The lack of funds has trickled down to cutting all of the little perks that formerly made this place semi-bearable - small freebies like popcorn and gum, and more important things like Tylenol. The big caveat to this is that some people do receive raises, promotions, inflated salaries, and special treatment. Those people are married to, dating, or close friends with the right people. Of those 20 or so VPs and C-levels, about half are married to or partnered with other employees, all of whom reap the benefits in ways big and small. A few employees are known to be mediocre or worse at their jobs, but have inexplicably kept their high-level positions because they're buddies with the CEO. The people at the top are mostly there by virtue of their personal relationships, or because they've done their time at the company. I could tell many stories of leadership's blunders over the years, but the prominent theme is leadership not thinking in the long term. You expect to see strategy changes over time, but when leadership is constantly launching new initiatives, watching them fail, and then changing course, it gives the impression that they're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. They built out a Distribution division, only to downscale it dramatically, then later cut it entirely. They cut the church choral division in 2012 due to low sales, then brought in a new editor in 2013, then cut it again in 2014. They supposedly cut MI (guitar/drums) in 2012 due to poor performance, but since that's the CEO's favorite division, it was never really cut. It's not just executive management that stinks, either. There are a handful of thoughtful, talented managers who want to lead their teams to success, but they are the exception to people who have no business managing employees. You might get lucky and report to a well-meaning but overworked person who was never trained how to be a good manager and doesn't have time to help you advance your career. Or you might get a straight-up terrible manager. My last supervisor was infamous for being incompetent and impossible to reach - people across departments had similar opinions - but this person was friends with a "favorite." HR looked the other way, even as every employee this person supervised left the company within a year because they couldn't deal with the frustrating work environment. If the low pay, tenuous company future, and bad management hasn't frightened you off, you may want to know what your day-to-day work life would look like. Chaotic is probably the appropriate word. There's a lack of infrastructure you'd expect with a small company, and there aren't many formal processes for training. My department was a revolving door of employees switching duties every few months, which is bad for developing any sort of expertise in your area. There also isn't professional development or any focus on keeping employees moving in their careers. If you are looking to develop your career or challenge yourself, you will not have much support here.