Oxford University Press Employee Reviews about "low pay"

Pros

Great building, facilities and people are great to work with

Cons

Low pay, nearly impossible to work across different teams to learn new technologies because management will not allow it.

Pros

Lovely office, great people, friendly atmosphere that makes you feel valued. Good work life balance, flexible hours.

Cons

Very low pay, slow career progression, company slow to respond to market changes

Pros

There is, indeed, an ok coffee shop. Pat yourself on the back, everything else is collapsing but there's a coffee shop! That picture of the dog saying "it's fine!" in a restaurant that's on fire comes to mind.

Cons

Where to start? The fact that some poor person in HR has been replying to all these dire (and accurate) reviews lately, parroting the party line, pretty much exemplifies the core issue. Nobody listens to us. The absolute, number one, cannot be avoided issue at OUP is that the pay is dreadful. It's not "competitive." It's barely a living wage. What really frustrates us as employees is the fact that this is never discussed. Every year there is a survey where we are asked what we'd like to get changed and pay is always the number one point. Management completely ignores this and will not even enter into a discussion about it. Similarly, the HR responses on this page ignore the pressing issue in every review: the low pay. This is exactly what it's like in real life. Art, or Glassdoor, imitates the real world. (Sorry, I know you, the person replying, are probably only an HR assistant doing what you're told, and that you probably agree with all the reviews anyway because at OUP, assistants do all the work for no recognition, no hope or promotion, and barely enough money to afford their groceries. Certainly not enough to live anywhere near Oxford.) If the pay were in line with the University, or indeed any other publisher, we'd be more forgiving about the terrible management, incommunicative seniors, lack of respect, workplace bullying, huge overwork problem and the fact that nobody ever listens to us. But if you pay peanuts and then close your ears whenever this is mentioned as possibly (!) the reason for the huge staff turnover, well...

Pros

Nice office, good location. Great gym.

Cons

Low pay, poor management. Awful IT. Marketing a joke. Provide a sub standard across the board. Every change is another nail in the coffin. We are the pound world of academic publishing. Incompetent managers go unchallenged. Bullying tolerated.

Pros

Great colleagues Some flexibility in hours Pleasant location Interesting work

Cons

Awful management culture No career progress opportunities Old-fashioned technology Pay/hiring freezes Blame culture Treating employees as expendable Very low pay for the area Out-of-touch upper management Bullying not dealt with Unpaid overtime to deal with crazy workloads Reduction in benefits (pensions etc) Frequent redundancies Outsourcing of critical functions to overseas contractors

Pros

Easy work. Low pressure. Decent benefits. People are nice.

Cons

Technology is woefully behind as are processes. Most of the technical team have only worked at OUP so have no outside references or experience. Very unwilling to try new things, Still hosting email locally so the recent hot days shut down email for several days. Not moving to the cloud is just one example of how far behind OUP is as far as technology goes. Very low pay - well below market rates. No career opportunity to learn new technology.

Pros

Great location, strong mission, strong digital products, good work life balance, and very talented hard working people on the ground.

Cons

Risk averse, uninspired management, low pay for hard work, process heavy, very top heavy management, very slow career growth.

Pros

Prestigious company on resume and you meet interesting and smart people who work there. Many of my close friends were ones I met through work. Most of the assistants are fresh out of college and so all roughly the same age with similar life experiences. Lots of happy hours, birthday parties, etc. Other benefits are that the head of OUP USA does make himself available to anyone in the organization no matter their role, from intern to C-level. And the retirement account options are decent (with matching), but that's only a benefit if you can live on your take-home pay after contributing. I knew others that were so strapped for cash that they couldn't even contribute 1-2% to their own accounts, because they needed every bit of their miniscule take-home pay. I wasn't able to save much from my take-home salary but was at least able to start a retirement account with a decent chunk when I left. Better than nothing. Others who were from the Tri-state area and lived and home and commuted in might have been able to live on the salary, but many of us moved from several states away and had no choice but to pay for housing.

Cons

Very low pay, low morale, and high turnover. No training other than learn as you go/trial and error. They've recently raised the salaries from what I've heard but when I started in 2015 it was a non-negotiable $30k (and two weeks vacation, which management admitted was abysmal) for editorial assistants which is impossible to live on in NYC. Others a few years before me started at $28,500. In 2015 with a college (and sometimes graduate) degree. These were people who went to Ivy League schools with perfect GPAs. Maybe we're all suckers for accepting being paid that little. It's honestly shameful. But it's the reputation and prestige of the company that draws people in. It took YEARS to make even a few thousand more. As soon as I left OUP for a new job (also in the nonprofit publishing world, hmm) my salary doubled and my workload decreased. I couldn't believe I didn't leave sooner. Extremely limited promotion options were also why I left. If the only avenue for significant salary increases are tied to job title then you're better off leaving the organization to be paid more. I don't regret it as a good first job despite these cons, but I was grateful to leave when I did after a few years of paying my dues. Lack of overtime: I know people who worked for demanding editors and routinely stayed until 9 or 10 at night and never received a dime of overtime, even though legally, their salary was under the threshold that entitled them to overtime compensation. Editors were resistant to approve OT even though time and time again, HR and upper management told them to pay OT if their assistants stayed past 5. I don't know what the current status of OT is, but this was my experience a few years ago.