Gengo Reviews
Updated Oct 20, 2023
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Excerpts from user reviews, not authored by Glassdoor
- 3.0Jun 2, 2021TranslatorCurrent Employee, more than 5 years
Pros
Sometimes they get regular work. The customer service/support team response is fast. They've been around a long time.
Cons
Their GoCheck review system is ideal in design but fails because the "reviewers" that check the translation aren't really verified or validated themselves and make more than plenty of mistakes, which isn't just "being human" like Gengo tries to claim. When you ask for a re-review, most of the time, they'll ignore you or just reiterate the original explanation, and without a third party to re-review the content, it just becomes a waste of time. The "suggestions" the reviewer gave in my language have always been inconsistent, and hilariously full of grammatical errors & typos. If you argue that, they'll just ignore you. This also causes the "glossary" to be full of errors, typos, and mistranslations as well, which does not get fixed, and people follow that glossary only to repeat the same mistakes. Until they make sure that their "reviewers" are top-notch who are constantly verified to prove themselves, the whole system falls down, and the scoring/reasoning is so inconsistent that it never serves its purpose. Such failure is proven by the fact that when I take edit jobs, most of the translations are so bad that they're worse than Google Translate. If GoCheck was really working, then it should have weeded those bad translators out, but they can't, and they won't. The rates are low, lower than those of most translation agencies, BUT they have a nice feature where the system will automatically pad the price if the project has been around a while and no one's taken it. The time that we're given for projects is... Unrealistic.
4 - 4.0May 21, 2017TranslatorCurrent Employee
Pros
Great flexibility, work from home, can take time off whenever you want. If you do good work consistently, customers will often choose you as a "favorite" translator, which means you get first crack at their assignments. I find their ratings system (your "grade" on your work) to be very fair on the whole. The company, of course, loves diversity: its translators work all over the world. So many languages, so many cultures! This company is also a reliable way to get the experience needed to do other translation work.
Cons
One downside is the fact that the pay is not great. However, they do all the work getting the jobs. You may also need to keep your schedule very loose; jobs come in at all hours of the day or night. The customer who needs the quick translation could be anywhere in the world, in any time zone. I often work in the middle of the night.
6 - 3.0Aug 2, 2017OperationsFormer Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
- Motivated, smart co-workers who are passionate about what they do - Nice location in Tokyo - Good concept, easy to get behind
Cons
- Unfortunate management - mostly nice people, but inexperienced and not uniformly skilled to manage - COO is the single most terrible person I've ever worked with in my professional career before or since - Often there's a mismatch between the strengths of the service and customers sold, leading to operational headaches - Dev resources go to increasing sales, usually not improving core platform, leaving Operations teams with not enough tools to do their jobs well - Lack of diversity in leadership, especially gender
17 - 3.0Nov 10, 2017TranslatorCurrent Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
* You can choose to work whenever you want at wherever you want.
Cons
* Nearly not enough work to be even considered to be a side-job. Only think of working for them as a translator if you are already making enough money to pay your rent.
2 - 4.0Feb 25, 2014Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee
Pros
Work from home, get to work when you want. Good system built for translating.
Cons
There were not a lot of jobs available. You sometimes had to wait a few days before jumping on the first thing that came up.
- 3.0Dec 16, 2015Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee, less than 1 yearIrvine, CA
Pros
You can work anytime you have spare time from home.
Cons
Not enough tasks and kind of hard to grab a job on the dashboard.
1 - 4.0Feb 28, 2016Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee
Pros
The art director is very nice and professional.
Cons
There was no cons during the time I worked there.
2 - 4.0Dec 12, 2017Anonymous EmployeeFormer Employee
Pros
People can translate at home
Cons
There are only few jobs
1 - 4.0Oct 20, 2023TranslatorCurrent Employee, more than 5 yearsBangkok
Pros
The pay is good and the mode of grabbing tasks by ourselves interests me.
Cons
Not many jobs available. They should work on their advertising,
- 5.0Aug 14, 2023Software EngineerCurrent EmployeeTokyo
Pros
Work-life balance was easy to achieve, and it was a good environment for women to work.
Cons
There were no annual salary increases and no benefits.
Gengo Reviews FAQs
Gengo has an overall rating of 4.2 out of 5, based on over 166 reviews left anonymously by employees. 74% of employees would recommend working at Gengo to a friend and 58% have a positive outlook for the business. This rating has decreased by -5% over the last 12 months.
74% of Gengo employees would recommend working there to a friend based on Glassdoor reviews. Employees also rated Gengo 4.2 out of 5 for work life balance, 4.0 for culture and values and 3.8 for career opportunities.
According to reviews on Glassdoor, employees commonly mention the pros of working at Gengo to be culture, career development, management and the cons to be senior leadership, benefits.