LivingSocial Reviews

Former Employee – worked at LivingSocial full-time for less than a year

Pros – Work from home
iPad and computer provided
Great benefits
Training in DC

Cons – People in DC approve deals in your city
Although your quota is 20/month, these cannot be met because half are denied by corporate
Management doesn't listen
Follow up training is non-existant
Your mentor is so busy trying to meet their goals that they do not have time to help

Advice to Senior Management – Realize that there is a learning curve
Treat your employees with respect
Go to bat for them to help push their deals through

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at LivingSocial full-time for more than a year

Pros – Pay , work from home, but you work 50 hrs per week, the product used to work better, but greediness and constant production changes have ruined the product instead of allowing the company to scale safely.

Cons – No recognition for loyalty, respect for seniority or experience. Instead, they expect you to work twice as hard and deal with twice the bull. The longer you work here the harder it gets. They hire new managers from outside with no technical proficiency, leadership skills, or capacity for social media or current media. This has been consistent in my region. (After firing perfectly stellar employees in November, now hiring cheaper or keeping incompetent ones). Since current management is incestuously connected up the ladder, there is no outlet to report to the company. Overbearing,constant berating, and foul, incompetent management. For instance, A regional sales director has two full time sales managers, to manage 15 seasoned Sales Staff. Three Full time managers, for 15 people. it is Impossible to take vacation, with possibility of no commission for the month even if you are over performing. No territory protection. Must reach out to hundreds of customers every 15 days, and log activity while expected to be on the road all day. Can lose accounts for punctuation or typos. Ridiculous competition with inside sales, when we shout "local" in our Branding. Customers can not request a local rep. Constant adversity with production, no communication with production, it is like two different companies. Setting up several sales people to call on merchants causing mass confusion and annoyance for merchants.Constant changing of compensation, approval guidelines, renewal guidelines, and production staff. Constantly screwing up flow of work for outside sales and merchants. People are now leaving daily.

Advice to Senior Management – Anonymously Survey your employees about the support they do not get from management. When hiring managers, test them on social media and technical proficiency. I should not have to train my direct reports. Actually had to recently teach a long time manager how to enter a merchant, g-chat and generate on agreement. You have no clue what goes on out here. Take a look at the bottom performing regions, and note that it reflects directly from the leadership. Promote inside executives who know what they are doing to management. Scale down management, and keep your promises. Frequently, I receive a negative regional email telling me how our team sucks, we are at the bottom, and not to "Drop our Pants" like the competition does. It is Disgusting. Especially when higher management is CC'd On it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at LivingSocial full-time

Pros – -Fun environment
-Great deal of independence, as long as you meet your unrealistic goals

Cons – -So much money was wasted in the first few years of the company with over the top expensive conferences, multiple layers of non-essential employees, etc - a sign of young, inexperienced management
-After the big layoff last year, things have gone from bad to worse, with company morale being at an all time low - so many talented people have left and are continuing to leave
-Dying industry - the daily deal is now hurting local business and merchants don't want to devalue their business by signing on

Advice to Senior Management – With all of the excessive spending in the beginning years, it was only a matter of time until the company's bottom line would be affected. You're going to have to quickly re-invent the company if you want to continue to stay in business for the long-term

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at LivingSocial full-time for more than a year

Pros – - Most people at the company are really great thinkers and innovators
- Social aspect was fun (pre-layoffs)
- Free snack and drinks

Cons – - Middle management is terrible and lacks foresight
- No raises, no promotions
- People glare at you if you leave before 6pm.

Advice to Senior Management – - Take a real hard look at who you put in charge, sometimes seniority or previous experience does not make a good manager/project leader

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at LivingSocial full-time for less than a year

Pros – Some of the slaves / people I met at company

Cons – Daily HR violations
Favors men, women are degraded
Lies
No help when asked
Managers talking about one another
No team work

Advice to Senior Management – Look at the practices of your tenured employees, don't assume because someone is a top performer they are a good employee. Treat everyone the same. Tream people with respect. Find people who have management experience to manage. Expect your managers to work as hard or harder than your sales people. Hire some good attorneys, you're going to need them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at LivingSocial full-time for less than a year

Pros – Being with others your own age, flexible schedule.

Cons – No one is happy. Employees are crying in the bathrooms and taking long lunch breaks for job interviews. People are dropping left and right, either getting fired for not hitting outlandish goals or leaving for positions with an actual career path. Comp plan changes for no reason and terrible direction. All the while, they punish employees by having them go on performance plans or firing them while they are experimenting with plans. When questioned about the extremely high turnover, terrible responses such as "we only want the best" or "that's the nature of sales" is given. Instead of being an innovate company, they just want to copy others.

Worst of all, they set your expectations during the interview so high, while knowing too well that you will never make that overall comp. They are crooks!

Given how badly Groupon peformed post IPO, they can no longer go IPO, so everybody is leaving.

Be warned, stay away!!!!

Advice to Senior Management – Stop treating employees as a number and be honest with them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at LivingSocial full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - Great benefits
- Fun atmosphere (but because of your coworkers)

Cons – I can't speak for the other departments but sales is a total grind and will suck the life out of you. A lot of the salespeople were promised opportunities for growth if it wasn't a good fit, but eventually were not given that opportunity and had to just grind it out till they couldn't take it anymore.

LivingSocial talks a big game about how innovated they are but their sales department is a carbon copy of every other sales department out there, if you've worked in one whip cracking sales department you've worked at LivingSocial's. The one they got going for them is a lot of young people who dont know any better and don't mind drinking the kool aid. They'll be delusional and talk about the great perks but they really don't know any better. Also, I find a lot of the practices unethical. We were told not to post fake reviews on ratings sites so that our merchants look better. But then LivingSocial corporate/HR does the same thing

Also, inside sales people are expected to work beyond 40 hours a week. That has been the standard for almost 2-3 years now. The work hour starts at 9am but we've had speakers and managers say to get in earlier. The work hour ends at 6pm but rarely anyone leaves at six and the office really isnt a ghost town till 8pm. If you have markets that have earlier time zones, you are expected to stay late to call them at prime hours. That means if you have Honolulu, Hawaii get ready for a six hour time difference.

The biggest con is a con in itself. LivingSocial tries to say they are staying small and they care about their employees but in the end, your just a cog in a very big machine that can easily be replaced.

Advice to Senior Management – Hire management who is willing to lay their own butts on the line.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at LivingSocial full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – + Fantastic health benefits
+ Tries to develop a "culture"
+ Recognizable brand that will get you an "in" elsewhere
+ Peers were incredibly fun and became friends

Cons – - Treats employees as commodities and not as people. This is a fine practice if you only care about the bottom line but I would think an organization who communicates to their employees that they are not like that wouldnt: lay off influential employees, punish those who do not bend the rules, force employees into roles they are not comfortable with and threaten them with unemployment if they don't comply, make false promises, not consider all factors when coming up with performance plans, etc

- Inadequate leadership. This stems from having too many on staff that are not experienced enough to handle the tasks at hand.

- Inept leadership. I do not need the VP of sales to tell me to make more money to "just sign better deals." My eyes could not roll further back into my head.

- Comp plan changes with no rhyme or reason and terrible direction. All the while, they punish employees by having them go on performance plans or firing them while they are experimenting with plans. When questioned about the extremely high turnover, terrible responses such as "we only want the best" or "that's the nature of sales" is given. Instead of being an innovate company seems as if they want to follow lock step behind others.

- No assistance at all with career development. Maybe this only happens in sales but if you want to grow in the company in anything other than sales, good luck.

- Terrible organizational structure and inequality. The team that ultimately approves deals are a bunch of mid 20 year olds who are reading out of a manual and do not use their brains to evaluate deals. They get rewarded for rejecting deals and actually make on average more than the people who are signing the deals. Perplexing huh??

- And worst of all, the Bread and Circus. LivingSocial has taken a page out of the formula the Romans used to keep the populace at bay. They knew that conditions were terrible and so to keep the general populace at bay, the Romans gave away bread and held circuses for entertainment. LivingSocial does the same and disguises it as "culture." Take away the bread and circuses and you have an extremely unhappy employee base.

Advice to Senior Management – Be an actually innovative company. Too many inexperienced and ignorant middle managers who are only covering their butts. Stop treating employees as a number on the bottom line and as people who were integral to the growth of your company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at LivingSocial

Pros – Some good deals but nothing compared to Groupon

Cons – Disgusting Local Management.
Selfish to point of "winning becomes more important than ethics and honesty"
Gossipy, easily put down competition when competition clearly outshines Living Social.
Most unethical group of people to work with. If you have ethics, morals, scruples, a sense of
fairness and have been up to this point descent - THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU.
If you posses those traits run to DC and get the job. You will fit in at all levels right up to the President.
By the way if I was an investor quickly demand your money back and RUN!

Advice to Senior Management – EGO's so big - they all think they are Local God's so full of Self Worship.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at LivingSocial

Pros – Good health benefits package.
Nice collateral to bring to merchants.
Good contests (that you will never, EVER win).
Competent and thorough training for one week at HQ in DC.

Cons – Absolutely abysmal and laughable base salary. Worst base salary in the deals game.
Deals are JUST the beginning...getting the Operations Team to run yours vs. the other MCs is difficult and in turn, the commissions are rare and not worth the hype.
TOO many other sales people both inside and outside in every market.
The amount of change will give you whiplash; objectives are unclear and malleable with every new week.

Advice to Senior Management – Get it together, a sales pro with 15+ years experience should NOT be making the same base salary as a new college graduate...it is de-motivating, insulting and engenders the culture that youth trumps experience and hard work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend