Pros
Your experience at Hearst will be very dependent on your department and team. For me, the people on my team were the best part- all extremely smart, funny, and close friends. There’s a lot of talk about how nice the building and cafeteria are, and it is actually a really nice bonus. A lot of perks (free stuff, cool events) come from being an editor at a big magazine, so the Hearst name is very helpful.
Cons
Everyone is told that pretty much the only way you’ll get a raise is if you get an offer from somewhere else. They’ll give you more responsibility for no extra money, and fully expect you to just be grateful to have a staff job in media. Hearst is profitable, but they’re paying dedicated, overworked employees the legal minimum. There’s essentially no budget for freelance writers or big reported stories, a very clear indicator that Hearst’s only goal is to turn a profit and please advertisers, not to do important work. The goals of the company seem to change every quarter, and it’s pretty evident there’s no longterm goal (which is the nature of media, but not very inspiring). There didn’t seem to be much room for growth and doing the same thing over and over gets boring. It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle because supervisors are stretched so thin that they don’t have time to manage their employees properly. Hearst is also very big on centralized teams (art, video, talent booking) that work across several brands. It saves money, but creates a lot of unnecessary chaos with very poor communication and certain brands always being favored over others.