Political, bureaucratic, discriminatory - Anonymous employee Paramount Employee Review

1.0
May 4, 2016
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The Times Square offices are pretty nice, the views are cool. Big budget means you can sometimes pull off pretty cool projects. I've had many awesome coworkers who were so hard working and truly collaborative. I really hope they're doing well now that they've all been laid off.

Cons

Massive layoffs frequently. This last one cut down 9% of the company. In a public relations piece, the CEO pretty heartlessly boasted about how much money he was saving by taking away so many jobs. Meanwhile didn't see a dime cut from his $40,000,000 (FOURTY MILLION) annual salary. Interestingly they also laid of about 40 people making $1+ mil salaries, makes you wonder who they were and how many are still left making that much. The reason the company is doing so poorly is because of the lack of innovation caused by politics/bureaucracy: you get promoted because of your connections, not your talents and when you do try to get your ideas out there, there's a million layers of approval above you. That's why the top is still making millions but they're laying off all the little worker bees where all the actual talent is. They don't tap the talent that they do have or at least don't incentivize them well. They have an internal program called the Pitch where they allow all the employees to pitch their best idea so that they can steal it for a mere 10k to the winner - even if it's a million dollar idea. The runners up can have their ideas stolen for free. There is CERTAINLY discrimination in pay. If you're a man, you might benefit from this. Ladies, look elsewhere. Promotions are disproportionately given to men. After seeing everyone I worked closely with get sacked and now having to do the job of three people, morale is spectacularly low. On the bright side, some of that bureaucracy has hopefully been trimmed as well.

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Pros

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Cons

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2.0
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Pros

- Benefits - At the Digital Specialist, Account Manager, and Account Executive level the people are mostly incredible to work with internally - Most AEs are able to have their own offices, which helps significantly to drown out the noise of senior management

Cons

- CEO / Culture post Skydance merger: I never thought I would ever be in a position where I would want to leave a company because of the people. But that is starting to become the case. ELT/SLT does not care about the culture, hard workers, or rewarding loyalty. They will treat you like a number because the only thing anyone cares about (and its so apparent more than ever) is the bottom line. - Compensation and values - working for Viacom and CBS / ViacomCBS / Paramount before Skydance actually felt like it meant something. Now, no one knows if we're even valued and more often than not we're made to feel like every day of our lives here we have to prove our value over and over again. You never genuinely feel safe or comfortable here because there's going to be layoffs every 6 months. Other tech companies will give better compensation - Paramount needs to up their game if they don't want to continue losing their best talent. - You're literally just a number here. The company does not reward hard work or loyalty so it's best to just watch your own back because no one will have it here. They have let go of the best leaders that I've ever come across and have kept toxic egos only because they know how to play the toxic game that working here has become

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