Wiley reviews

Constant downsizing and outsourcing, plus the lack of raises last year, have killed morale. Managers were moved from a 35-hour work week to a normal 40-hour work week (and expected to be available at home) with NO compensation for the extra hours and NO raise. Wiley is more interested in saving money by outsourcing and axing employees than ensuring quality and efficiency. Trimming the fat is understandable, but getting rid of qualified employees and sending their jobs to poorly trained temps and contractors (who have absolutely no loyalty to Wiley) or lesser qualified employees is shooting ourselves in the foot. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of VPs around here. Recent changes to procedures have made many processes more convoluted and time-consuming. I spend most of my day being frustrated and aggravated. In an effort to be more "modern," upper management rushes to embrace new technologies and processes without properly testing them or getting user input. The latest brainstorm is to post critical information for employees on a Facebook-like site. I feel like I work for a social club instead of a corporation. Maybe I'm just a grumpy baby-boomer, but that's another issue -- many people here over 50 don't feel valued or feel like we fit in anymore. But that's OK, because our severance papers are on their way.

If you're interested in engineering, this is not the place for you. Almost anywhere else will be a better experience. Where to start? The CEO talks in platitudes. At one town hall, he mentioned "servant leadership" multiple times, explaining how he is there to serve the people that work for him. Yet, the CTO and many other senior leaders directly contradict this ideal with their daily behavior, mostly an arrogant, top-down authoritariansim that is straight out of by gone era. The CTO is the most egregious authoritarian. He dictates technical decisions, despite having no understanding of what his most recent whim means. For example, at his direction, Wiley started the process of moving from Okta to AzureAD for SSO, not for technical reasons, but because the CTO "hates Okta". Similarly, the CTO decided the technical organization would use a monitoring platform, Dynatrace, not because of technical reasons, but "because". There was no technical rationale, and there were no engineering teams involved in the decision. The CTO is also the reason for the rampant cronyism. He came from Pearson, and since joining Wiley has actively recruited and hired Pearson employees. The best example of this is his decision to start an "engineering center" in Sri Lanka. Why Sri Lanka? Because it's a hotbed of technical/engineering innovation? No. Because it has world-class universities turning out top engineering talent? No. Because many of the world's leading technical/engineering companies are opening offices in Sri Lanka? No. Rather, because the CTO did the same thing at Pearson: he started an office there and recruited a bunch of people; these are the same people that he has now poached from Pearson and got to join Wiley. So, he is actively building a monoculture where everyone are former employees of Pearson and bing all the baggage of that failing organization. While the leadership at Wiley is pathetic, the employees are just as bad. Most are apathetic--understandably. That said, no one is doing good work. Instead, they're all passing time until they get fired or laid off and get a seveance package. I actually had a co-worker tell me that he would not leave on his own, because then he wouldn't get a 4-5 month severance package.