What is it like to work at Discovery?

[Anonymous]

Are they really as family friendly as they claim? Does it depend on your boss? What is the culture like? What do they value? Are they hiring?

[Anonymous]

They're hiring - check the website. I have to say it's been a great place to work in terms of flexibility and family-friendliness. It's a very casual workplace and once you've established a reputation for yourself (that you can and will produce good work product), people trust that you will get your work done and you are pretty much free to do whatever. Working from home is no big deal - it happens all the time without it being a fixed arrangement through HR. I'm sure it does depend on your boss a bit, but I've had several and it's always been like that.

One thing to be careful about though is that since David Zaslav has arrived to helm the ship, the place has really gone downhill in terms of being a good place to work. I'm sure the company will do great in terms of profitability under his leadership and he, along with a few high-level executives, will really cash in but the old spirit of Discovery is really disappearing. I think in the long run, Discovery will still be a relatively family-friendly place to work but nowhere near as good as it had been in the past.

[Anonymous]

Ditto the previous poster about things having gone downhill over the past few years--it's not really immune to layoffs, which in my mind makes it not very family friendly.

Also, I think for most companies that are family friendly, it always depends on your boss and your department.

I also think Discovery suffers from the "cool company" factor, where so many people like the product and are consumers of it that they think a) they understand what it takes to run the business and b) that it'll be an awesome place to work because of it. I think that most people there, though, are in accounting or marketing or sales and it is JUST LIKE at other companies, and just because you are selling TV shows instead of paper to mid-sized companies a la Dunder Mifflin does not mean that you will enjoy your job more or that it is still not a job.

It is also probably not worth commuting from say, some parts of Virginia like Alexandria or west of Tyson's because Silver Spring is a long way around the Beltway from there.