Cornerstone OnDemand FAQ

Pros

Great work/life balance. Leadership is approachable and the company truly works hard to innovate the platform. There are many learning and development opportunities, as employees have access to partner content. In my 5 years with the company, I've seen a lot of momentum around product releases and enhancements that clients have requested. The employees at Cornerstone are extremely smart and talented. There is a "team of teams" approach across business units that need to work collaboratively to achieve goals. The companies mission and goals are clear and its exciting and fulfilling to be apart of an amazing technology that is responsible for helping to educate our global community.

Cons

Sometimes internal processes/approvals are slow or non-existent, making it hard to execute a seamless business transaction. At times there is internal confusion on how to alleviate issues and where/how to escalate appropriately. This lack of clarity can cause undue frustration and negatively impact SLA's. Leadership levels across departments should be more empowered to make decisions to support niche business requirements. Because a majority of employees in NA work remotely, most of the employee perks are reserved for employees working out of corporate, so while the benefits are attractive, they are not extended to all employees equally. The company does not have an attractive tuition reimbursement policy, which is unfortunate considering the service provided.

Advice to Management

Empower more decision making at multiple levels in the organization to support growth. Enhance benefits extended to remote employees or make it clear what benefits apply to which employees, so employees don't feel slighted/ or unappreciated when they are ineligible/unable to receive those benefits

Pros

I do not absolutely hate this job, though I do have some major concerns. The pay is fairly competitive and your team members and manager are usually great people. I do enjoy getting to work from home.

Cons

A lot of the recent posts on Glassdoor make references to a recent cut to telecom expenses for remote employees. However, this insulting decision to no longer compensate employees for the tools they need to get the job done is only the straw that broke the camels back. The relationship that CSOD has with its remote employees has been eroding for years. I believe older posts on this site refer to a feeling of there being two companies, the HQ and the remote. Remote employees are largely ignored when it comes to any form of moral boosting that occurs in the office, though we are not immune to hearing about those free meals, classes, and perks. Remote employees are not part of the family, and it has been going on for a while. You’re better off being a contractor. As others have noted, our products are unintuitive and break easily. This is likely because the base coding for our major systems are almost 20 years old. New features are over-complicated in an attempt to fit in to these foundations that were not designed to handle the load. Executives have their heads in the clouds and are not familiar with the actual product that we sell, while at the same time unable to create an innovative new solution. The majority of PM focus is on playing catch up with new industry standards, while ignoring the basic features that barely work. Our clients don’t respect us. The sales team does a nice job of telling prospects that even their computer-illiterate grandmothers can be system admins, only for them to quickly find themselves in over their heads. And good luck getting someone from support on the line. If you need an engineer… I don’t know, I’m not religious, but try praying… Then once the client is locked in to a 3-year contract they learn that it will be too expensive and complicated to have their data migrated to a different system. Essentially trapping them. Benefits have also dissipated, no longer free health insurance, dental, or vision. We now offer the insurance with the least amount of coverage possible, with the highest premiums. If your spouse has access to other insurance, you essentially cannot afford to insure them with Cornerstone. Last complaint. The work/life balance is terrible. You will work long, thankless hours on projects that are assigned to you by a manager that has never performed the work and therefore does not understand what a reasonable timeframe is.

Advice to Management

Stop treating remote employees like second-class. Fix the base system before trying to create new streams of revenue that no one buys. Stop telling us there is no headcount issue. Don't beg your employees to post on Glassdoor after you've significantly cut the compensation budget for us to do our jobs.

Pros

Great work/life balance. Leadership is approachable and the company truly works hard to innovate the platform. There are many learning and development opportunities, as employees have access to partner content. In my 5 years with the company, I've seen a lot of momentum around product releases and enhancements that clients have requested. The employees at Cornerstone are extremely smart and talented. There is a "team of teams" approach across business units that need to work collaboratively to achieve goals. The companies mission and goals are clear and its exciting and fulfilling to be apart of an amazing technology that is responsible for helping to educate our global community.

Cons

Sometimes internal processes/approvals are slow or non-existent, making it hard to execute a seamless business transaction. At times there is internal confusion on how to alleviate issues and where/how to escalate appropriately. This lack of clarity can cause undue frustration and negatively impact SLA's. Leadership levels across departments should be more empowered to make decisions to support niche business requirements. Because a majority of employees in NA work remotely, most of the employee perks are reserved for employees working out of corporate, so while the benefits are attractive, they are not extended to all employees equally. The company does not have an attractive tuition reimbursement policy, which is unfortunate considering the service provided.

Advice to Management

Empower more decision making at multiple levels in the organization to support growth. Enhance benefits extended to remote employees or make it clear what benefits apply to which employees, so employees don't feel slighted/ or unappreciated when they are ineligible/unable to receive those benefits

Pros

the company has unlimited PTO, nice offices, daily breakfast, weekly lunches, unlimited snacks, arcade at headquarters and lots of remote roles

Cons

Company is losing its culture. So much focus on cutting costs at the expense of employee experience. No clear goals across departments resulting in silos with each having its own agenda. Very frustrating and demotivating to come to work

Pros

Generally intelligent and thoughtful people at the company. There's a spirit of community and camaraderie amongst coworkers. Company is attempting to modernize the software and products. Some recent changes in leadership put passion and energy forward. Easy place to retire, if that's your goal.

Cons

Conflicting priorities compounded by constant additions of work streams that prevent even slight movement toward "pie in the sky" goals. Injection of work into pod-level priorities from C-suite and outside departments. 20-year-old monolithic application and associated processes that slow down development and cause painful bugs for ourselves and clients. Lip-service paid to migrating into AWS while engineering team's attempts to do so are ground to a halt by burdensome process and broken tooling. Key processes are locked behind gatekeeping, further slowing down engineering. Technology decisions are driven by cheapest up-front cost with little-to-no hidden cost analysis. As a result, we are actively unwinding some of these decisions to recoup costs. Thorough whittling away of benefits; now stuck with a lousy HSA and high-deductible health plan, free massages are replaced with chairs, team events are sporadic, infrequent, and rife with concern about cost. Recent high-profile personnel departures are disconcerting and does not inspire confidence.

Advice to Management

Switch out of cost-saving mode and start investing. We won't hit the Rule of 40 by chasing one-off costs (we were called out on this during a quarterly financial call!), and removing benefits and freezing hires for the next 18 months just hurts your employees. Remove gatekeeping from our processes. Let your engineering teams own their product from inception through to production. We are ready, and we're all (clients included) feeling the pain of our slow processes.