Pros
If you're a recent college grad, you probably can handle the job for a year. If you've got more experience, stay away. *Paid health insurance * Fun subjects to write about * Experience on daily content creation that superficially looks good on a resume * Great smaller teams (though I've heard that there's only one big content team now) * Well-stocked kitchen with free snacks * Free weekly lunch and weekly breakfast * Free monthly gym membership * Lounge space with video games, foosball, etc. * Paid parking in the garage
Cons
* Pay is abysmal on the content team, no matter if you're an editor, a staff writer or a contractor. The salaries are insulting, especially if you bring a lot of experience. * Content drives Gateway's scheme, but leaders don't really care about the quality of the actual content. Content gets published with errors, inaccurate headlines, etc. There's no real editorial process. * Content basically is rehashed stuff from 5 years ago. You're stealing ideas and sometimes actual headlines every day. * If you love to write, you'll become bored. You'll basically do terrible slideshows until you die. Previously, there was a little room to be creative with intros, but now it's all terrible one-liners that are only there to sell ads. * Content leadership is nil. The current content lead has never been an editor and has no idea how to manage people or processes. And leadership does not care. * Higher leadership doesn't care about content as a "product," and their goals change frequently based on the direction of the wind. Nobody can tell you what the hell's going on. * Related to the previous point, there was a massive layoff in 2016, and for several weeks before it happened, leadership was nowhere to be found. * The content and website presentation is awful. Legitimately awful. If you care about your work, you probably will be embarrassed to put your byline on anything or to share items to your personal social media accounts. * Nobody can tell you how the company makes money, or even IF it's making money. The quarterly meetings don't help. * Chaos reigns. There is little to no strategy or alignment among the content, dev, ads and marketing teams. * There's not much room for promotion (if you manage to stick things out), and there's no offer of personal development (training, conferences, etc.). * Lots of interns take on the work of full-timers. Granted, the interns are paid, but they're still shouldering the burden of what should be a larger and more productive salaried staff. * You're forced to work with content management systems that were developed in-house that are incredibly wonky. These clearly were developed without writer/content manager input. They break often and simply don't do what you need them to do. It hampers your productivity in a big way.