Gain experience in a corporate job but you must have an exit plan
Pros
The only pro is being able to work from home, yet even this is gradually being withdrawn and monitored with an attendance tracker.
Cons
A lot of reviews have already summed up what it's like to work here as a PM so here's another list to reiterate what you can expect if you land a job here. Micromanagement - As soon as you finish your training modules you will be micromanaged. Every email you send or move you make will be monitored by your team lead or manager and you will be thrown straight into the deep end of things. You will be given reams and reams of Standard Operating Procedures and rules to look through and be berated if you ask how to do anything because you should have "found it" for yourself. Your manager will expect you to drop everything to have a chat or a call to check in and discuss your day, but if you need your manager they will ignore you for a couple of hours in the hope you might work it out for yourself. If you get it wrong in the meantime then you will be berated and asked why you didn't ask for help. This is how inexperienced managers are trained how to deal with their underlings. Work overload - You'll have to deal with huge amounts of QC of translations which they call "Final Eye". Because they don't pay linguists a living rate, expect the files to come back horrifically formatted with so many errors, to the point where you have to spend hours fixing it up and hope that any mistakes don't get passed to the client. If they do, then you'll get told off about your "quality" and a "compliance report (CR)" will be filed on you, blaming the PM for everything and putting a black mark on your record which will lower your score in your 6 month review. Feedback system - There is no casual feedback. Anything short of perfection will result in a CR being filed. Even if it's not your fault the CR will be assigned to you. You'll spend hours every week trying to fill out CRs which are then scored by Company Health. Poor scores on CRs also affect your 6 month review so you must go through multiple rounds of QC with your manager to make sure it will score well. While you're wasting you're time with this, your other work will pile up and you'll have to rush to leave on time, resulting in more CRs because you overlooked some minor detail. Sales team - The sales team will promise the client the world, advertise 24h and weekend coverage on accounts that don't have it, and then get aggressive with PMs when they can't deliver on the impossible. CRs will fly your way and be used as a whip to punish you for not making miracles happen. Your team will probably be understaffed due to other PMs leaving, so prepare for a very close but miserable relationship with sales. High staff turnover - Turnover is very high due to the immense pressure to perform with 100% energy all day every day. If you stick around long enough, you'll see all your team members quit and then be surrounded by fresh graduates who have no idea how much they are going to be exploited. When they realise and quit, it's time to get the next batch in and pay them beans too. People who stick around tend not to be able to find another job or have hit the ceiling of their career, which is a bit sad. This job will eventually destroy your self esteem and confidence which could also be a factor in why some people stay, since they are constantly bigged up but then beaten down afterwards over something so frivolous as a late project delivery. But you're told not to take the harsh feedback personally. This is what you call gaslighting. Goals - Goals are unattainable and act to squeeze you of every last bit of energy you can give. Your review sheet is used more as a threat not to promote you than actually for your development. You'll be told you won't be promoted unless you improve or do XYZ, which will probably push you to your limit and induce a mental breakdown, of which I saw several happen with other co-workers. You'll be given lots of admin tasks and "strategic initiatives" as well as being swamped in complex project work, being told off when you can't accomplish tasks outside translation projects because you were too busy QCing trash files all day. You'll also be made to attend pointless meetings camera on (so you can't get on with any other work) that brag about how much money the company is making and how you should be pushing to "save every cent". Pay - Pay is terrible at first but does rise with tenure; however, they will offer a poor to average base salary and top this up with a quarterly performance based bonus. They will dangle this bonus like a carrot and again use your review sheet performance as a threat to decrease, remove or not give you a promotion or pay rise. By all means work here, but be prepared to be insanely fake every day. You need to have a thick skin and have an exit plan, otherwise you will crash and burn or, even worse, become a lifer in this vicious corporate wheel of doom.
