Everything's important, except the peopl - Anonymous employee Future Employee Review

2.0
2 Apr 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fairly relaxed and collaborative working space, with no strict hours policy, and no barriers to working with people throughout the business. Good opportunities to gain exposure very quickly to most facets of the company, which is less likely in other media houses.

Cons

The culture of fear. It becomes achingly obvious, very quickly, just how brutal the view of staff in Future is. Within weeks, if that, you'll notice the first people that are suddenly not there anymore. Then more will be gone. It's a pure asset/liability tightrope at Future, as far as staff are concerned and, as the business continues to actively move away from focusing on content (whatever hooey they spin to the contrary), and instead focusing on affiliate sales, anyone not pushing or contributing to that agenda have their days numbered. The management team are petrified of Zillah too. No-one dare make a stand, or even dissent, so everything is essentially micro-managed, and teams are doing work that EVERYONE knows is wrong-headed, but are doing it anyway 'because the boss says'. It's not sane to try and develop a career in such an arbitrary business, so avoid, which is a shame to say, as there are a lot of good people still here. But, they'll get made redundant and replaced with graduates by the end of the year too.

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Future Response
8y
As former employee we are sorry to hear you felt this way while working at Future. We always encourage our employees to give feedback to their People Partner or discuss with their line manager because it is the people in the boat that matter and the employees are our first priority. It is true that we are a commercial business and so all of our ventures need to have feasible and valid returns on investment so that we can remain profitable and competitive in the market. However, Magazines still contribute to a huge chunk of our revenues and we are incredibly proud of the content within. We value all our teams and we try to be as transparent as we can. We have lean teams with a lot of expertise within their field. Within our competitive market we are proud of their flexibility and dedication because those are the things that are needed.

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Good pay Great benefits Cares about work-life balance

Cons

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1.0
6 Feb 2026
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Pros

- Everyone is super engaged with their work - Teams meet and share their progress regularly - Remote work that respects your timezone

Cons

- Unbearable amounts of micromanagement - Questionable journalistic ethics, e.g. "reviewing" products that have merely been unboxed and photographed, as well as excessive AI authorship - Extremely misleading work expectations — was told in interviews that I would be working on one story per day, resigned when I was expected to handle more than 15 in a week - Very reluctant to grant PTO or sick days — work "missed" while off is expected to be made up for twofold, and I was told at one point while sick with the stomach flu to "get over it" and "just work on 'easy' stuff today"

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