December 9th, 2008

November’s Review of the Month

Posted by • December 9th, 2008 • 1 Comment

Things are looking up for those in the auto industry. Not only did the White House and Democratic Congressional leaders report Monday that carmakers General Motors and Chrysler are one step closer to receiving a possible emergency bailout, but one current GM employee will be receiving $500 for the company review they submitted at Glassdoor.com. This GM employee, a Designing Engineer in Warren, Mich., is the winner of Glassdoor’s November Review of the Month. This review was selected due to its candid look inside one of the major US car manufacturers while managing to see the silver lining despite the company’s hardships. As of today, employees give GM a 64% company satisfaction rating and CEO Rick Wagoner Jr. receives a modest 46% approval rating.

Check out some of the pros, cons and advice to senior management this one employee has to offer…

Read more »

Recent Posts

Southwest and Continental Score Highest with Employees

Posted by • November 26th, 2008 • 34 Comments

For anyone who has ever traveled by plane, you know that sometimes there seems to be no getting around a delayed flight or avoiding an unfortunate loss in luggage. But what we also know is it’s the people who work for the airlines that can make the hassles during our travels just a little bit easier.
With Thanksgiving just a day away, the airports are expected to be a little more hectic than usual. So with that in mind, we wanted to find out what airline employees thought were the best carriers to work for and see if it ranks even to JD Power’s airline customer satisfaction ratings. And does a happy airline employee mean a happy customer?

In terms of employee satisfaction, Southwest ranked the highest low-cost airline and Continental received top score as traditional network leader. But when it comes to customer satisfaction, JD Power reports that JetBlue ranks #1 for low-cost airlines and Alaska takes the lead as the traditional network airline. As we dug deeper into our airline employee reviews and ratings, we found four of the airlines (Alaska, JetBlue, Northwest and Southwest) had Glassdoor ratings that were significantly different than their JD Power ratings.  Although JD Power gave JetBlue ...

Read more »

Tags:
, , , , , ,

Black Friday may be extra hard on Wal-Mart employees…

Posted by • November 25th, 2008 • 23 Comments

Editor’s Note: Sadly, this post was prophetic – it was written before we received the very sad news this morning that a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death as people rushed into a Long Island Wal-Mart on Black Friday.  Glassdoor extends its deepest sympathies to those that were injured or died, and their families, in this senseless violence.  [11/28/2008 10:20am PST]

Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season which falls the day after thanksgiving, may be particularly hectic for Wal-Mart employees this year. That’s because high jobless rates and record low consumer confidence will cause holiday shoppers to seek out deep discounts in order to stretch their holiday budget further. Wal-Mart, known for its low prices, is a natural place for discount seeking shoppers to turn. This added influx of holiday shoppers may be bad news for Wal-Mart employees, who are already “Dissatisfied” with the overall work experience at Wal-Mart, which rates lowest among employees of major retailers on Glassdoor.com

We compared employer ratings of frontline sales associates at major retail chains and found Wal-Mart to be at the bottom of the list of places to work, with overall scores of “Dissatisfied”. Other retailers, Best Buy and Nordstrom topped the ...

Read more »

Tags:
,

Symantec Employees Forewarn New CEO

Posted by • November 19th, 2008 • Leave a comment

On Monday, Symantec CEO John Thompson announced that he is stepping down as CEO in early spring (although retaining his position on the Board). This perhaps is a good move for Thompson considering that his employee approval rating was just 38% which means that he is one of the lowest rated CEOs according to the rankings on the Glassdoor CEO Watch List.

Enrique T. Salem, Symantec’s current chief operating officer, will take the lead and replace Thompson as the top executive at the security software firm. 

So as a courtesy to the CEO, employees are offering up advice on what the company needs:

Read more »

Tags:
,

Advice for the new Chief Executive at Yahoo! from Glassdoor

Posted by • November 18th, 2008 • 2 Comments

Yahoo stock price is up today given the news that CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down. At times like these, not only can we provide employees and job seekers insights that encourage more informed career moves, but we can also offer a new CEO tips on what is working and what is not from an employee perspective. As the Yahoo Board works today to find a replacement for Yang, we’ve culled employee reviews to give the new CEO, whoever it may be, a unique overview of internal company operations.

So new CEO, here’s your chance – listen close to the Yahoo Reviews by your soon to be employees:

Yahoo Business Development Manager in Sunnyvale, CA

“Big layoffs to reduce expenses. Figure out what Yahoo stands for – no one seems to know (Google = search, Microsoft = software, Yahoo = ??? email, gossip news???, large audience??). When I was there, Marketing couldn’t come up w/ a coherent message b/c no one could figure out what defines Yahoo. A bunch of lame marketing at that time – FUSE acronym, TV commercials w/ people carrying around placards w/ URLs on them, etc”

Read more »

Employees remain positive but layoff talk is on the rise

Posted by • November 17th, 2008 • 2 Comments

I’m sure I don’t need tell you that the economy is performing REALLY badly these days.  U.S. jobless rates are at a 14-year high and consumer confidence numbers are at an all time low.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 37.2% year to date, and personally I can’t bring myself to look at my 401(k) statement.  All of this economic turmoil prompted us to analyze company reviews & ratings on Glassdoor to find out what effect the economy was having on how employees review and rate their companies.

Company reviews remain balanced
Since our launch, employees have shared a pretty balanced view of their employers.  On average, 42.4% of reviews are positive, 32.2% are negative, and 25.2% are neutral.  When we compare our positive review percentage to the Consumer Confidence Index, we see that majority of reviews have remained positive and constructive, even in October, when the Consumer Confidence Index plummeted to an all time low of 38 (1980=100).  Frankly, that surprised us.  We hypothesized that when the economy slowed, employer ratings on Glassdoor.com would fall, but they haven’t.  That’s the good news.

Read more »

October’s Review of the Month

Posted by • November 11th, 2008 • Leave a comment

It’s been tough to report good news in the financial services industry recently, but today a former employee from Bank of America, one of the world’s largest banking institutions, received some good news – $500 worth of good news to be precise. This former Bank of America Credit Analyst has been selected as the winner of the Glassdoor’s October “Review of the Month”. This review came to our attention because it was voted by several Glassdoor members as ‘helpful’. So without further ado – here are some of the specifics that make this review a worthwhile read (especially for those in the financial services industry).

This Credit Analyst’s review stresses the impact that location, management and banking division have on the shape of one’s career experience at Bank of America, so be sure to research those areas before joining the bank (read the full review here):

I can’t stress how much your experience at the bank will be VERY dependent on what city you live in, what division you work in, and who your manager is. Some managers are highly incompetent, and poor motivators, others are great motivators, great leaders, and inspire you to work hard. So when you interview, ...

Read more »

Glassdoor Secures $6.5 Million in Series B Funding

Posted by • October 28th, 2008 • 9 Comments

As you may have seen already, we announced today that we have secured $6.5 million in Series B funding, led by Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from our existing investor Benchmark Capital.

The past few months have been a whirlwind, and Glassdoor.com has experienced significant growth. Our new investors share our vision of providing greater transparency to the employment space and helping people make better decisions about their work.

With this round, I’m happy to announce that Jim White, managing director, Sutter Hill Ventures, will join the Glassdoor board of directors. Jim has a proven track record of successful collaborations with leading business and consumer-facing companies, including Shutterfly.com, Fix.com, Farecast and Infinera, and his experience will be a valued asset to our board. He’s also great guy and I’m looking forward to working with him.

Since we launched our public beta in June, the site’s “employee generated content,” has grown nearly 40-fold to more than 115,000 contributions for 14,000 companies across a wide section of global industries. Immediately following the public debut, we received contributions from employees around the globe, prompting us to accelerate the community’s international capabilities in August. As result, Glassdoor ...

Read more »

Make Millions, Get Fired!

Posted by • October 23rd, 2008 • 29 Comments
You

While it remains to be seen whether or not the bailout bill will curb top executive salaries and payouts, the topic of CEO compensation has always been the subject of controversy and gossip. In particular, the debate over severance packages circulates around what is fair and whether the executive should really be paid for a job that was not well done. One of the most memorable in recent history was the $210 million exit package awarded to Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli in 2007.

With all the moving and shaking in the job market, we started thinking: What is the going-rate to fire a CEO executive these days anyway? Is there any correlation between a CEOs approval rating and the quality of their severance package?

Thanks to SEC requirements, various public records and Glassdoor’s CEO approval ratings system, we wanted to see if there is any consistency in how severance packages have been awarded to CEOs that have recently been asked to see themselves out the door.

Read more »

Glassdoor Takes Its Own Medicine

Posted by • October 22nd, 2008 • 1 Comment

We spend a lot of time here at Glassdoor thinking about transparency – how do we use it to help everyone make better career decisions?

We’ve been working on solving that fundamental question for awhile now, and to be honest – before we launched we weren’t really sure how our hard work would be received. Now that we’ve launched however, things have changed – we’re no longer just making “good guesses” – we’re fortunate to have an engaged community that will tell us what we’re doing well, and in some cases not so well.

Thankfully the feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive, but in the spirit of practicing what we preach we wanted to share some of the feedback we’ve received from members of the Glassdoor community – the good, the bad and the ugly. So here it is for all to see:

Read more »

Page 150 of 154« First...102030148149150151152...Last »