Pros
Despite what a lot of the reviews here say, not everything about Southtree is terrible. I worked there for over two years and more than likely have much more experience with the company than anyone else posting here. There are a handful of decent things about Southtree. The company's growth over the past 5 years has been nothing short of astounding. In the two years I was employed by them, I saw an expansion of the facility I started in and then a move to a brand new and much larger facility after that, simply on account of the fact that business kept growing. The service Southtree provides is in my opinion, a good one. I did the math and in the time spent there I transferred anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 tapes of varying formats. I saw a lot of footage. Some of it was hilarious. Betamax tapes of vintage porn will never not be hilarious to me. However, a lot of the stuff was pretty sad. I got more than one order sent in by the parents of children who had been killed by drunk drivers, in house fires, etc. These were some of the only remaining physical memories that these people had of their loved ones and it felt good to be able to show people things that they may not have seen in years. Southtree also provides a decent healthcare package to eligible employees, as well as a 401k option. That's more than a lot of companies can say in this day and age. The pay is decent as well, I think new hires are started out at $9 an hour now and generally get around 35-40 hours a week, if they're willing to work them. There's also the opportunity for overtime during the holiday season, since production ramps up a lot. So it's not without its perks.
Cons
However, all of that said, the cons of working for this company long term greatly outweigh any potential benefits. I honestly don't even know where to start. If I had to choose one word to describe the Southtree culture, it'd be Machiavellian. Employees are kept very much in the dark in regards to why changes are made and why new processes are implemented. At first I thought this was just management being incompetent but as time went on I realized that it was seemingly intentional. I was in a slightly elevated position, but only elevated enough to see the flaws with the company. Not elevated enough to actually do anything about them. Employees are extremely undervalued, no matter what sort of fluff upper management tries to feed you that would say otherwise. At the end of the day, if you are not in junior or upper management, you're seen as little more than a peon. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so blindingly obvious. One of the most stark examples was the fact that during the summer, temperatures in certain parts of the building would regularly rise up to 100 degrees, because the air conditioning system was old and broken. It took the entire summer for the problem to be rectified. It took six months of asking to get a water cooler. The toilet paper is straight out of a Ukrainian nuclear bunker. All of which seem like little more than minor annoyances, but when the owners of the company are sitting in an air conditioned building downtown in an office outfitted with kegs and an espresso machine that cost God knows how much, you can hardly be surprised when employees start feeling a bit disgruntled. Employee morale at Southtree is the lowest I have ever seen at a workplace, and I've worked some really awful jobs. The place almost seems like purgatory for most of its employees. Everyone just seems to be waiting for something that can get them out of Southtree. This has largely to do with the fact that nobody feels valued at Southtree, a problem that extends to every single department. I know this because I talked to people and learned how they felt about the place. Something that management might do well to try. Favoritism (and borderline nepotism) is very, VERY obvious as well. People who do poorly in entry level departments somehow end up in elevated positions, only to be later revealed as the friend of someone else in an elevated position. Employees who do good work and are dependable end up left out in the cold, wondering if they're ever going to advance with Southtree. The answer to this is more than likely "no". However nothing was more grating to me in my time working at Southtree than the two owners almost militant devotion to their image. Aesthetics trump functionality at every turn and if something doesn't look good it's not going to be implemented, no matter how efficient it is. Employees are told to dress nice on the days that the owners are going to bring personal friends through the plant to show off their accomplishments. These outings also generally serve as an excuse for both owners to waltz into the production facility and make drastic changes to procedures based simply on how they look. The most stark example of this culture was what came to be known by Tapes employees as the "Murder Room". There is a room in Southtree that contains outdated equipment that is no longer used and three to four large cardboard boxes. These cardboard boxes are full of items that customers sent in to Southtree to have digitized. These items were lost from their original order due to any number of reasons. Each item is equipped with a barcode that allows them to be tracked back to their original order. However, instead of returning these lost items to their original owners, they're just kept in these boxes. The reason for this is the company is afraid of how they'll look if they have to admit they made a mistake by returning them.