Pros
When we were WarnerMedia, working at HBO Max was prestige. We were led by Jason Kilar, Christie Haubeggar, Andy Forssell, etc. - and got rid of all empathy when Discovery leaders took over. We hired a top-notch tight-knit team, the best in the business. We cared about each other and worked hard together. We did exceptionally well as a streaming service until news of a merger broke (thanks, Stankey and Zaslav for ruining everyone’s lives over a game of golf). Before Discovery took over, the company cared about its people, DEI initiatives, career growth, innovation. The only good thing I can think of is the unlimited PTO policy that was carried over.
Cons
Morale is terrible. Constant layoffs. Pinching pennies. A very two-faced leadership team. They want you to do more with even less after every round of layoff. No loyalty for those who’ve been at the legacy company for 10-20+ years. No promotions for the those who’ve worked their tails off - just making it harder to get it done with new performance evaluation systems. But somehow certain teams get their promotions through while other teams are SOL. Way to promote people in one cycle and then lay them off in the next - why would you let go of top performers? You should have never rebranded HBO Max to Max. The old purple branding coupled with HBO made it a cool brand and recognizable. Everything was cool and I was proud to wear the company on my chest. Now the Max service is diluted with crappy unscripted shows from Discovery that no one cares about. You should hide them in their own navigation. People are still bitter about Discovery taking away WarnerMedia’s remote policy during COVID. The forced hybrid model wasn’t a good look from management. Management hasn’t done anything good or nice for it’s employees for making them sit through multiple rounds of layoffs. In fact, they held a summer social events and then had mass layoffs shortly thereafter. Talk about backstabbing staff into thinking they were celebrating employees.