SWEATSHOP CULTURE - Avoid at ALL costs. Longest, worst, most miserable 7 months of my life.
Pros
- Made friends through commiserating with colleagues who were just as miserable - Had opportunities to interact with speakers/linguists of a variety of languages - Boosted my resume due to having what was probably an illegal amount of responsibilities, many of which were not even included in the job description. At least I gained some skills.
Cons
- ZERO work/life balance (had to work past 9pm regularly with other coworkers) and sometimes had to log on over the weekend (off the clock) to monitor progress of certain jobs/projects, and check to see whether linguists had claimed phases, language pairs, etc. - TransPerfect is known as the sweatshop of the translation industry with great reason - Delivery deadlines are often in other time zones so you will be expected to stay well into the night in order to accommodate a 9AM deadline for the Barcelona office's time zone, for example. - Micromanaging is a serious understatement - Sales Dept. has no regard for Production Dept. and treats all employees in the production department like dirt, at least in the NYC office. - Unmanageable and unfathomable workload - No lunch break - Regularly had to bring dinner to the office so that I could heat my food up in the microwave and then eat it at my desk while working into the night - Came out of TransPerfect with clinically-diagnosed PTSD - CAFs (formerly referred to as "CRs" or "compliance reports" will get filed against you for things that you did not even do) - Current employees are forced to write positive reviews on Glassdoor in order to lessen the blow of the truthful ones. That is a FACT. - Expected to come into work when sick--one of my hardest working colleagues had to come into the office with a 102 degree F fever, and I did too.
