CNET Networks Reviews

Pros

The paycheck; that's about it.

Cons

Limited advancement opportunities unless you are a personal friend of management, inflated egos of said management, sufficating culture, etc, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

You wouldn't have sold to CBS if you actually had a strategy in place woud you?

Pros

Benefits as as a CNET employee - CBS benefits suck. Work/life balance is nice.

Cons

New people having to fit in with the cliques in upper management. There aren't any new ideas because they have the same people in charge since 90's.

Advice to Senior Management

Dont get rid of good people just because they dont fit in with the CNET social network

Pros

Interesting work and staff ; good work/life balance . Less MBAs, more weekend musicians. They're pretty flexible about allowing you to work from different offices if you want to move. However, most of the action is in SF headquarters. Not a lot of dead wood staff. Most people have a sense of humor and there's less arrogance than you'd encounter at places like Google, Yahoo, etc. Office shuts down for Christmas week.

Cons

Don't expect to advance if you're not in the SF office and in engineering. Hardly any relevant employee training and the content doesn't help you on the job... you're expected to train yourself by reading old wiki pages. Some staff seem pretty clueless that we're a media company and make our money by selling advertising.

Advice to Senior Management

Update phone infrastructure so remote offices can hear phone conferences. Better employee training and create an internal cross-team management fast track program.

Pros

good vacation, good benefits. If you already come in as senior management it is not bad. However, don't come here as a team player and hope you are going to move up in 2 years. It just does not happen that often.

Cons

Middle level management smothers individual team members. We are not growing fast, and now CBS owns us.

Advice to Senior Management

So many decision get made from so few people. If you are a manager it is a good place to work, If you are an implementer it is not a good place to work. Because of this company structure many individual implementers leave. From the teams I have been in, we have a 50% turnover!!!!

Pros

Good place to Network, friendly people, generally keeps up with industry trends, benefits are good, vacation - particularly the last week of the year is fantastic.

Cons

lack of focus, a follower rather than leader, wholly focused on the bottom-line at the expense of long-term growth, bad-morale

Advice to Senior Management

Think beyond immediate quarterly results Currently there is no room for growth or experimentation. Please let people submit ideas - and listen! I've heard fantastic ideas from all corners that are ignored by management. Upper tiers of management seem to have no idea that this happens. A lot of official talk about "innovation" that remains a talking point and stalls where action is needed.

Pros

CNET encourages taking personal time off and does not require insane hours for working. There are training sessions offered to employees that help improve professional growth and personal growth outside of work as well. The integration with CBS Interactive has made it one of the biggest online networks in the US. Most people don't care how you do your job, just as long as it gets done.

Cons

It is not easy to transfer to other departments. The benefits could be a little better. Traffic to sites are not the same and employees are getting the bad end of the stick because of this.

Advice to Senior Management

The company could offer better benefits. Look for new, improved models to grow the business.

Pros

Pay is acceptable. You get the chance to work on some large systems. I made some good connections there but I don't think that that's the norm. Management in my group was very supportive of open source. Good benefits. Good recognition of a job well done by middle management.

Cons

Very little opportunity for advancement. The product managers did not do a good job. Senior management never told anybody what was going on. Senior management takes care of their own, and nobody else.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit.

Pros

Great HR training and professional development. Great people.

Cons

Political organization. Management is out of touch. Very male-dominated.

Advice to Senior Management

Talk to your employees more. Listen to their concerns.

Pros

The sodas are $0.25 and coffee is free. There is a very laid-back environment, though that may be a bit of a detriment to getting things done. If you can get a title with the word "Director" in it, life should be pretty good. It's also nice to be able to get packages delivered to the office. It makes ordering stuff from the Internet so much more convenient when there's someone to sign for stuff (instead of having packages sit on my doorstep at home).

Cons

Not sure how the fact that we're now CBS will affect things. If you enjoy your own personal time (evenings, weekends, holidays, vacations) then life might not be so pleasant depending on how your reporting structure is built. While some problems seem to be acknowledged, the culture of failure leads many in charge reluctant to change how anything is done. Over-promising the customer and under-delivering has been the MO.

Advice to Senior Management

Grand plans don't always pan out when there isn't very much consideration for how things will be implemented. Plans don't turn out well when everyone is set up for failure. Selling things that don't exist and promising delivery in unreasonable time-frames doesn't make anyone (internal or external) very happy. It's ok to say no once in a while, if things really are impossible or not do-able.
Instead of being reactive to resolving issues, addressing the root causes (being more proactive) can go a long way. Morale is low, no matter how rosy your glasses are.

Pros

Good to make a lot of industry connections, as well as friends. Our group deals with a lot of other companies, vendors, and industry professionals. This can be a good stepping stone for future careers.

Cons

Upper Management seems confused, as well as employees as to what we're doing now that CBS acquired us. The meetings they have that are "company wide", just seem to confuse the employees as well, since the whole meeting revolves around how "awesome" we are, and how "bright" our future is.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a look at what other companies are paying their employees, and take note. I am making 30% less than similar careers in the same industry, and working to get a raise takes a bit of time. HR people should take a look at sites like this, and see that we are paying UNDER market value.