Lionbridge Reviews

Pros

Good HR policies, opportunity to learn new technologies and tools, good middle management and work culture. Understanding and helpful colleagues and good infrastructure.

Cons

Senior management not very helpful. Lack of transparency in providing news on policies and projects and lack of personal recognition to work.

Advice to Senior Management

The senior management should be more approachable to the employees and should try to retain clients. Also policies and procedures and project news should be more transparent

Pros

You get decent salary package

Cons

No work-life balance
A few people in the management are rude

Advice to Senior Management

Management should not treat employees as commodities. There should be a work-life balance.
If you want employees to reach the moon, then don't give them just a boat to reach there.

Pros

Flexibility, support, tolerance, location, benefits

Cons

needs to improve training and investment in employees.

Advice to Senior Management

be more visible and more positive, build the myth of lionbridge

Pros

Lionbridge is a well-known company and experience with search engine optimization in Lionbridge looks great on your resume.

Cons

You will put in a ratio of up to eight hours of unpaid time per hour of paid time. Expectations of earning $13.50 per hour or working twenty hours per week are grossly exaggerated. They reduce your actual hours worked based on "expected performance metrics" which are impossible to meet in the first several months of employment. Fill in your timesheet for 10 hours of work time, and you will find it reduced by more than half based on their expected productivity. Additionally, assessors study and take tests (all unpaid) for over 66 different tasks. A very limited number of paid tasks can be completed during these first several weeks. Finally, pay is monthly by international wire transfer (from Ireland - which your bank may charge for) and pay is not received until six weeks after the pay period ends. For example, when the September pay period closes (9/30) the payment will not be received in your account until mid-November. Starting out, expect to work up to ten weeks before being paid, and expect to be paid for less than ten hours of "productive time" per month. You could make more money per hour at any minimum wage job. Check the other reviews -- you won't find other assessors contradicting this experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay for task completed instead of conning people into believing that there is a fixed hourly wage or fixed number of hours available. Use a methodology similar to mturk and set a rate of pay by task after qualifying. This helps people know what to expect, and gives your company more credibility in the marketplace. Take a look at Glasshouse! Your reputation needs a lot of work!

Pros

A paycheck. You may luck out and have some normal colleagues who make the experience of this place a bit more tolerable.

Cons

Not sure what the deal is with Lionbridge management.. Are they miserable and bitter before working here or does this place make them that way? The Management style.. make their employees feel stupid whether berating them in group emails or meetings. Innovation from employees..hah, you will keep your mouth shut if you have any ideas and sit around rotting waiting for your task; basically assuming the role of a button-pushing monkey. The only way to succeed here is to be an incredible bumkisser. You make one mistake or come up with a better idea than your manager and you're ripped to shreds. This place is good at one thing, making a mess out of honest, hard working, intelligent decent peoples professional and personal lives. A pay raise...HAH! Not one for years for the worker bees but it's fine for senior\middle management to reward themselves with fat raises\bonus\stock options while CEO sends out company-wide emails crying about 'belt tightening, 'trying times' This is a facade of a company which live day by day praying the next product will be the 'great one'. Prospective employees, read the other reviews and decide whether you want to subject yourself to this - trust me, you deserve better. I may sound bitter because I AM, It will take a long time to erase this place from my memories.

Advice to Senior Management

Share the wealth, the cost of living is getting higher. At least give the worker bees a modest increase. We all see the financials and it's not trickling down to the folks who have to tolerate Lionbridge!

Pros

This job is flexible - you have the ability to work when and where you want. It is perfect for someone who doesn't necessarily need the income but can save it and put it towards a luxury item or vacation.

Cons

There are performance expectations that I think are totally unreasonable. When you don't reach the performance goals, you get a strongly-worded email to "adjust your paycheck". In other words: delete some hours, we're not paying you unless you work at a frantic pace. They publish updated performance expectations, but based on the our 'adjusted hours'...how is this accurate? Quite often, there isn't enough work to go around so you can't even count on getting in 20 hrs/wk. Personally, I need to work 25 + hrs to receive 20 hrs of pay. Pay sounds good up front for this type of work, but I quickly found out I had to adjust my timesheet down in order to get paid without a hassle.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be helpful if there was more guidance during startup, including a mentor to get real-time advice from (a live chat area would be perfect). We should be paid by task, rather than by hour if the expectations are so specific.

Pros

I appreciated the flexible hours that allowed me to work a few minutes or a few hours at a time. It was nice to be able to work late at night or early in the mornings.

Cons

Frequently changing guidelines.

Must learn new guidelines on personal time.

Not enough time allowed to do a good job for some tasks. If I researched an answer, I went over the allotted time. If I didn't research, then I sometimes got the answer wrong.
Difficult to stay interested in repetitive tasks.

Performance seems to be judged solely on subjective, not objective guidelines. Rating search engines is a matter of opinion. Seems to be no way to dispute the moderator's assessment of your rating.

Advice to Senior Management

I'm wondering if it's possible to pay raters a flat fee per task. The more experienced raters would make more, and it would allow the less experienced raters more opportunity to improve. There must be some way to weed out those who would speed through tasks just to increase their pay.

Pros

Work from home which will save money on gas driving
Paid monthly for tasks completed
Good balance of work and family time

Cons

Low pay
Lots of unpaid training time and time required, plan on giving up at least 40 hours pay at 1st and on going training is required which is also unpaid, plan on giving up at least 8 to 24 pay per month in unpaid training time
Company will cut you lose if you miss their quality mark
Company will cut you lose if you can not make their piece per minute chart
Pay is based more as "piece work" even through its called hourly
Better have a 2nd computer because many site they ask to review are dangerous and contain virus
Quality levels are all over the chart, each quality moderator has their own opinions and there is too much gray area

Advice to Senior Management

Quality levels reviews need to be consistent, many tasks are unreasonable to complete in the allotted time given at the quality levels expected. Pay should be higher and training time should be paid.

Pros

Ability to build your own business. Good support resources. Dedicated to training their people. Company is working hard to stay cutting edge with new product offerings.

Cons

Pay could be better, just middle of the road for the expectations.

Pros

The flexiblity to work from home and PTO if you are an employee.

Cons

No room for advancement or pay increases. All they care about is production and how much they can bill their clients.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop treating employees just like a number. They are people.