MySpace Reviews

Pros

Work is actually very challenging. Managers are good and coworkers are reasonably competent

Cons

Company is on the way down and you can feel the desperation in the executives. Work is piled up in a desperate move to stop the decline. The worst part is none of the work you do will ever be appreciated by the outside world.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire better Product managers that have real web industry experience instead of former baristas, wannabe musicians and journalists.

Pros

Company is well known. Situated in Beverly Hills.

Cons

No good managers. Management is full of idiots.

Advice to Senior Management

Please change your managing staff

Pros

Despite the product over the past year or two, there are some really talented people who worked or still work for MySpace. If you can find them, make friends with them and you may learn a thing or two.

Cons

There was a time where you could see the passion for the product in all levels of the company. Today, that sense of unity, pride and passion is absent with a large majority of the staff and that attitude is reflected back into the product. While I said one of the pros for working there was that there are really talented people who work at MySpace, but with that comes the fact that there are also a lot of 'cooks in the kitchen' and projects once thought to be a 'game changer' are de-scoped weeks before its release.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out what your internal processes and structure needs to be and stick with it. Changing every six months leave people disillusioned, frustrated and complacent. Also, empower team people in all departments and let your teams do their job. Stabilize this and the passion may return, and perhaps so will the users.

Pros

Free food, great benefits, friendly environment, great place to network with your coworkers

Cons

poor middle class management, low tier agents often overlooked, work schedules changed without your discretion

Advice to Senior Management

always ask for feedback from your underlings

Pros

The environment is very laidback. The people in general are very nice and as an Intern I was allowed to sit in a lot of meetings. Interns also have an opportunity for real work experience rather than making copies, answering phones etc. There is a cafe now on the third floor which makes getting lunch convenient. The patio on the 3rd floor has an amazing view of Los Angeles.

Cons

Interns are unpaid and there are cliques in the workplace.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to be more innovative.

Pros

Some of the cutting edge stuff used in development, if you get to work on it.
Fancy food on the 3rd floor cafe, if that's important to you.
Flex work hours.

Cons

Poor vision.
Poor inter/intra team communications. Lack of cross team coordination, Lack of accountability. Release dates are picked seemingly arbitrarily and discarded easily without a second thought. Aggressive schedules often lead to inferior product, that supposedly gets pushed to a phase 2 schedule, which never pans out. Usually phase 2 involves a re-architecture.
Managers do not provide any feedback(positive or negative),
Employees are on the edge most of the time,
Information sharing is not encouraged, employees avoid sharing, seemingly it provides them job security.

Advice to Senior Management

develop some management skills.

Pros

A place where you need to wear many hats, so can learn a lot if you are willing to put in the long hours.

Cons

Internal groups do not communicate well, its very difficult to get things done and launched on time, lack of leadership vision and direction. Product is weak, and consumer experience isn't good.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the consumer experience, and stabilize platform to improve site.

Pros

Name recognition
Conversation starter when applying for other jobs
See the backend and risks of social networking

Cons

Management
cliques
unprofessional co-workers and supervisors
politics in terms of promotions and well...everything
no communication unless in a clique
hardly hired their temps even though they say they are temp-to-hire
International department is favored
Computers are joke

Advice to Senior Management

Grow up you are not in high school

Pros

Great people, working with Engineering is a pleasure.

Cons

Product Vision is not clear. Product Management overall is extremely weak and lacking ownership.
They struggle with vary basic tasks such as defining the behavior of their products. If we can't get a well thought out requirements document, how are we supposed to deliver solid product?

Priorities across the company are not consistent and often compete. It's clear our exec team is not functioning as a team. As a result, development teams are left to deal with the chaos.

Cronyism galore - the new executive team brought too many of their friends on board, often in roles that are not needed or that add a distasteful layer of bureaucracy which kills productivity.

The company needs to be more agile, not bogged down by people who have no idea what they are talking about and little incentive to actually perform their jobs adequately.

Accountability - where is it? How many times can an individual fail to deliver and not reap the ramifications. This especially holds true for the cronies.

Incentive based rewards - how about taking care of the developments teams who are asked to work evenings and weekends to deliver product? This should start by making Product Manager work evenings and weekends to deliver a proper spec.

Advice to Senior Management

For your own sake and that of your employees - GET ON THE SAME PAGE & STOP COMPETING! Understand your roles and responsibilities. And no, you should not have the same responsibilities.

You need to utilize your resources wisely. You have to work smarter so they don't have to work harder.

Pros

MySpace was an awesome entry level job for me and I got to learn a great deal about the industry. There were tons of great coworkers, some nice perks including parties and concerts, and the excitement of working for the world's largest social network.

Cons

Things started to go downhill after a while, and it became clear that MySpace was just not nimble enough to keep up with rapidly gaining competitors. Perks slowly disappeared, some great managers were pushed out and replaced by less competent ones. By the time the big layoffs hit in 2009 the atmosphere was not recognizable compared to what it once was.

Advice to Senior Management

MySpace is still a huge entertainment portal, but it needs to be about the complete user experience. World domination is an unrealistic goal at this point.