No work-life balance, constant layoffs, little confidence in leadership.
Pros
Flexible work location. Decent pay (but my pay was set by a smaller company that Nielsen acquired, and Nielsen has little choice but to maintain the existing salaries of talent they'd like to keep on — I suspect new Nielsen hires would make less for the same position).
Cons
Positively enormous con: they will work you like a dog. For the past year, I've worked at least 60 hours per week (with no additional compensation for that, of course), and I have zero work-life balance. I have no time to exercise; I barely interact with my family; and I live in a constant state of anxiety about not meeting the 5 big deadlines I have on any given week. Currently contemplating leaving because life quality is so poor—that is, if they don't lay me off first, which brings me to con #2... Cost-cutting culture and massive layoffs: I receive a farewell note from someone I know about every other day now, informing me they've been let go. Many of these people are smart, very hard-working people. Morale is low as a result. Additionally, teams have become so lean that those of us left have three times as much work as one could reasonably accomplish. And there's no chance you can hire a freelancer or intern to help—because, well, your team has zero budget to spare. Petty policies: Related to the above, Nielsen recently changed their policy to "unlimited vacation," for the sole purpose of not having to pay out earned vacation days when people quit or are laid-off (and TONS of people are laid-off these days). Given how overworked everyone is, no one is going to use anything closed to unlimited vacation and, when we finally do quit (or get let go), Nielsen won't owe use a dime for all the days we earned but didn't get to take off. This screams of pettiness to me. It says you don't care at all about people who work like crazy for you, just as soon as you're done using them. Just pay people the vacation time they earned but never got to take, fair and square. Weak or absent leadership in some areas: in my area of Nielsen, product leadership is strong, but commercial leadership is questionable. Leaders aren't present and taking accountability in many cases. When good leaders are promoted or move to a different team, those positions are often not back-filled anymore, so it's likely you'll end up reporting to someone less senior/experienced, which can impact how much you're learning and your own advancement at the company. Not much faith in company's ability to turn things around: Nielsen moved too slowly for years and is scrambling to catch up and be more technology-driven. There are some big, promising initiatives in the pipeline that are supposed to be our salvation, but there's not much confidence about when they'll actually exist or about the people leading them. Nielsen doesn't have many leaders who are experienced in technology development, and they're stingy these days about hiring external talent. I think this is the wrong approach - the companies needs more new blood with different experience; more of the same people working on these totally new, technology-driven initiatives isn't going to cut it. To sum things up, when I was given the option, I didn't participate in the employee stock purchase plan. I honestly don't know if this company will turn itself around. Granted, it's a big ship and sinking it will take some time, but I don't know if it'll be able to plug the holes quickly enough. This may have been a great company to work for once (and could maybe be again), but I would suggest that any prospective hires stay far away for awhile.
