Pros
Originally was very remote friendly
Cons
DSS in recent times has received a lot of ire from senior employees. To understand why it helps to understand the company history. Years ago MLB formed a company focused on streaming services. Disney purchased a minor stake in the division with the option of purchasing a major stake in the future. Which Disney did do culminating in the launch of the Disney plus platform. What is important is that compensation and benefits have changed under Disney’s ownership. Compensation at MLB wasn’t very competitive. But, there were usually yearly salary increases and bonuses. Also MLB had a very nice 401k package where the employer would automatically contribute 6% of eligible yearly earnings. That 6% would increase to 15% if you were with the company for 10 years. In terms of benefits MLB had really good health care that was completely paid for by MLB. The 401k and health insurance were heavily advertised to incoming employees. As well, they had a nice winter vacation package where you would get Christmas thru new years off. I’ll start with benefits. Under Disney things began to change. Health insurance began to change for remote employees first to a lesser quality of insurance. It will also change going into 2020. Employees were told this was to bring benefits more in line with Disneys benefits. Unfortunately the quality of the insurance continued to worsen. Some employees realized that the change would cost them thousands of dollars. It was like getting a pay cut. In 2021 DSS employees will have to pay half of their insurance. At no point was pay ever increased to compensate for this additional financial burden that employees would have to shoulder. The generous 401k plan was scrapped going into 2020. Whatever level you managed to get into under MLB is where you’d stay permanently. Instead a new 401k plan was introduced where Disney would match $0.50 for every dollar you put into your 401k up to 4% of your base salary. This means that you have to be earning a base salary of 243,750 in 2020 in order to max out Disneys match. DSS introduced another form of compensation called the LTI plan. The plan originally awarded money to employees, the money would vest over a period of 4 years. The idea was that it would encourage employees to stick around. In 2019 the plan changed from money to restricted stock units. Unfortunately the LTI plan is also attached as a percentage of your base salary. And is decided as a function of your review. E.g. you might get a 5% LTI award. So if your salary is 100,000 then your award would be 5000. But because it has a vesting schedule you won’t see a dime of that money until 1 year from the award date. Near the end of the year DSS will have yearly reviews. The process feels is very flawed in that management decides who reviews who. So there is a lot of opportunity for management to actively burry/hide problems. Especially if the problem lies with a manager. The review process culminates in a report for the employee outlining what their raise is (or rather cost of living adjustment) and bonus is for the year as well as their LTI award. Raises in general were not awarded to employees in 2019. This was particularly frustrating as employees were working long hours and expected to be on call during launches and holidays. Record breaking profits on the launch but no raises. Instead bonuses were larger than usual. The compensation report feels misleading because of the vesting schedule for the LTI. The total amount listed for the year feels really misleading since the LTI money will not be truly yours until 4 more years. Unfortunately the report doesn’t show the vested LTI amount from previous years to give a more accurate representation of your true compensation for the year. If you do the math and you haven’t already had a few years of LTI award the total compensation can be very different. One has to wonder if this is intentionally done to inflate the reported total compensation. Purportedly DSS doesn’t like giving raises because raises are permanent. DSS however has not officially said this in a meeting. However, in a recent town hall they purportedly avoided discussions regarding compensation even though employees really wanted answers to. It definitely feels like there is merit to this claim as Bonuses, LTI and even the 401k are tied into the base salary. If your Salary isn’t changing from one year to the next then those other forms of compensation won’t increase. This shouldn’t need to be pointed out but Bonuses and LTI aren’t guaranteed. There have definitely been big differences in bonuses from one year to the next. And reports are that not everyone gets an LTI award either. Feels like this is a very good way for DSS to keep employee compensation as a fixed cost and to suppress their wages. Moreover, in meetings DSS did acknowledge that they were working on making their offerings more competitive over the long term. Another promise was to revamp their job descriptions and provide guidance on how to move up to the next level. Promotions can be very challenging to get. Management likes to pride themselves on the fact that their employees earned their promotion by actively doing the job they were being promoted to. That sounds fair. But, when you dig into the details you’ll often discover that it’s not fair to the employee. The employee may be working in that position for more than a year. There has also been talk about promotion based on favoritism rather than merit. This allegation is hard to deny when you start looking at who is promoted versus experience. DSS also likes to tout their education reimbursement benefits. Unfortunately due to the long hours, it’s unlikely you’d be able to take advantage of that benefit. The Christmas break is purportedly going away in 2020 as well. So even the holiday perks got axed under Disney. DSS also doesn’t like people talking about issues. Purportedly upper management got mad about discussions regarding health benefits deteriorating and managers were telling their reports to leave the channel.
