Pros
The work is interesting and you get to experiment and learn new things. You're encouraged to try different types of projects. It's rewarding to create and publish books and see them do well.
Cons
The company's HR policies leave a lot to be desired. The probation is 3 months long, during which time, you're not entitled to leaves Your casual leaves get unlocked only after 2 months, and your privileged leaves are only unlocked after 8 months! So you've to take leaves without pay. There are other types of leaves like Honeymoon leave, but the policy is cleverly structured so as to make most cases ineligible for these. Even the HR policy docs are worded like a strict teacher talking to an errant child; the tone itself is extremely rude and looks at employees as defaulters. There are no performance based annual hikes. The company gives a measly cost of living adjustment every year that is always lower than the RBI's inflation projections that it is supposedly based on. The recruiters make tall claims of a generous annual bonus consisting of 15% of your salary, but again, I haven't seen a single penny from this yet even though this is used to inflate my CTC. When I was hired the HR person lied and said they've always gotten the bonus since they've been with Packt, but after I joined, I was told it had been a couple of years since anybody got a bonus. The performance based awards they give lack transparency and involve laughable sums that won't even buy a decent meal. The senior leadership is out of touch from what an average employee goes through on a daily basis. The reports they get don't reflect the reality and they seem to operate in another dimension. Whatever genuinely nice people they had, they laid them off in favour of AI-pro slave drivers who lack empathy and are only concerned about their AI agents working well. The only reason Packt books work is due to its human experts but the company is so caught up in keeping up with AI trends that it's destroying this expert first culture.
