B&H Photo Video reviews

While your experience at B&H will largely depend on which floor/department you work in and who your manager is, there are issues with B&H's company culture that prospective hires should carefully consider before accepting an offer. First, B&H is deeply, deeply entrenched in an antiquated business model so if you don't like working in a cubicle that hasn't been cleaned since 1980, you probably will not enjoy the workplace in the offices. While they are currently WFH on Fridays, you are expected to be sitting at a desk from 9-6 Monday through Thursday regardless of your job title. Nearly nobody in management comes from a photo background or understands the photo industry beyond sales which quickly becomes tiresome for anyone working in creative roles. It has been a slow bleed of senior creative talent since B&H has returned to the offices which has led to demoralized, unmotivated teams. Workers bond over their collective exasperation and frustration with management. B&H also gets away with a lot of things that a public company could never pull off. Conservatively, 80-90% of management in the offices is the same gender and ethnicity. Countless managers are appointed with no qualifications beyond being related to someone or having dirt on someone higher up than them-- with exactly the kind of results you would expect. This is a company where the head of HR is the CEO's sister. You will also be celebrating Jewish holidays which is fun at first (if you are salaried, that is-- hourly workers have to cover many of those days with PTO). However, you have to use PTO to cover national holidays if you don't want to report to your cubicle on the Fourth of July for example. For a company with so much potential, it is a shame to see what it has become under its current leadership.

At hire, make sure that if you are offered a yearly amount of pay, that you make sure that you are a salaried employee, not hourly. Don't assume that because your job offer was an annual amount, that you are going to be paid a fixed salary per week. You may learn AFTER the hire, that you are an hourly employee. The benefits are that you will never work more than 9 hours per day. But you will not get normal paid off holidays like your other professional friends. BH's vacation policies seem cool at first, considering you get 3 weeks of paid time off and another two to three unpaid weeks off. But you don't get any regular holidays off at all. That means as a professional employee, doing professional work in an office, you will be working on these holidays every year, or you will have to dig into your paid time off to take them off. You will have to work on the 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and New Years eve. Presidents Day and other bank holidays you will have to work too. Also, there is no sick time off. You get 3 weeks of paid time off but that includes sick days. So, if you have an accident one year, that takes you out for a couple days or more, this starts to eat into your vacation time. Since the company is owned and run by those who honor Jewish holidays, there are about 3 weeks of Mandatory time off throughout the year, but only some of that is paid and you can end up having up to two weeks of unpaid time off, which is only cool if you don't need a few paychecks per year. Or else, you would need to use your paid time off on those mandated closure days. Of course if you are a salaried employee, then you get paid for all of those Jewish holidays by virtue of being on a salary, not hourly pay schedule. So make sure you are Salaried! Or lose out on two--three weeks of hourly pay per year.