Flexibility about working remotely after having a child. Bad maternity leave.

The company's leadership structure leaves a bit to be desired. A lot of lip service is paid to ideas like supporting women and mothers, and the themes of the websites underneath the CafeMedia umbrella bolster the idea that this a pro-women company, as well — but these ideas aren't always carried out in practice. Depending on the exact team//site you're working with, this can either be a work environment full of support or one plagued by office politics; I saw both in my time there. Part of the problem is that because CafeMedia as a leadership structure operates so separately from its satellite sites, the culture you're immersed in (for better or worse) really is specific to your exact team. One of my coworkers tried to go to HR with a complaint about the culture within her particular team — and was fired by the leader of that team a week or two later. Again, there really is no set, practiced relationship between overall company leadership//HR and the individual sites themselves. However, there definitely were positive elements of working here, as well, and you could luck out with a great, supportive team (as I did) — but the overarching office politics are what made the strongest impression.

There's a lot I truly enjoyed about working here, mostly thanks to the people I worked with on a lateral level. However, the way CafeMedia consistently handled lay-offs indicates a lot about management's true values. I worked here for just over a year, and during that time saw — on multiple occasions – groups of people called into the conference room, only to collectively emerge without jobs. It was highly public and dehumanizing; and this from a company that puts no shortage of self-congratulatory lip service behind the idea that their human talent is the asset they value most. Turnover is terrible here.