Green Dot Reviews

Pros

Lots of smart, dedicated people

Advice to Management

Focus on the core business.

Pros

Quick moving, great people and decent pay

Advice to Management

Focus on getting the job done-less on politics

Pros

Close to market salary. Good benefits.

Advice to Management

Add more IT support for products.

Pros

Green Dot has a lot of really strong people working there. Most folks seem to really want to do a great job. You can get funding for projects if you can show a good ROI. Although different departments have (very) different cultures, my experience has been that management encourages people to step up into challenges.

Advice to Management

Engage your frontline personnel in problem solving. Communicate more pro-actively. Reduce the frequency of organizational change, it is unsettling.

Pros

Free coffee, granola, and fruit?? Yes, the only pros are free food.

Advice to Management

During my first years at Green Dot, I worked for a company that seemed to legitimately care about its employees, both by organizing team-building events and holiday get-togethers, as well as encouraging employee growth by hiring and promoting from within. The overall culture and environment was one that really made me stay, even once stagnant compensation became a real anchor on my motivation. My remaining years were marked by wasteful hiring, near constant waves of layoffs despite assurances from the CEO at our quarterly meetings that they wouldn't happen, or that the last one was THE last one.

Add to this a merit system seemingly designed simply to put employees down and make them feel undeserving so as not to expect much come merit time, and a CEO that simultaneously promotes his stable of yes men and women (and sends emails to let everyone know) and then throws a tantrum whenever salary expenses are higher than expected.

All of this to say that the culture and environment here at Green Dot is toxic. If you are here, you are trying to get out or are terrified of one day being let go without cause. And if you are out, trying to get in...well, I don't know what to tell you. May the odds be ever in your favor?

My advice to management would be to look hard at what made Green Dot a great place to work for, and strive towards that. I don't think the company can succeed if the majority of employees feel under appreciated. That's something an annual "employee appreciation breakfast" won't solve.

Pros

Great talent. Hard working crowd

Pros

- Ability to gain tremendous amounts of experience across a wide range of products and services.
- Unique/innovative products that service a very important customer demographic that other banks ignore.
- Many great people that are bright, funny, and hardworking.
- RSU benefits can be very lucrative at Sr. Manager levels and up (but you have to stick around to get them).
- Flexible and casual work environment.
- Very "open door" approach to projects and management interactions. All levels, especially in Pasadena, have the ability to be involved and aware.

Advice to Management

Tone at the top sets the stage for everything else . . . as long as that remains consistent so will the cultural issues and history of uneven execution.

Pros

Competitive salary until they outsource your job, great equity incentive, lots of opportunity to make an impact, free coffee/fruit, flexible schedule, some really well-intended people

Pros

They will most likely hire you. Yes, even you. Company appears to be able to make money no matter what it does or doesn't do.

Advice to Management

Incentivize innovation over relationships. CEO needs to leave his baby to make it grow. Spend real time with customers (CEO is not a true customer).

Pros

The workforce and atmosphere is very positive and friendly. They have alot of small perks. Free coffee and fruit. Lots of break rooms with fridges. Water coolers nearby. Good chairs and desks. Open spaces with happier tone colors.
Pay is better than other places in the industry.
Benefits and holidays are very generous.
Good Health and Dental plan

Advice to Management

Get....better...leaders.

Stop putting people who are friends with Steve in charge of major departments. They know how to make Steve happy, they don't know much about running a dept.
People were running around doing so many projects they never noticed what was actually going on during the floor.
At some point, I just stopped working. I didn't care.
I was looking for other jobs and did the absolute bare minimum around the office.
No one noticed. NO ONE. Alot of days, I Left hours early.
Clocked out from my phone from home, answered important emails if needed from my laptop. Went on for months, even when I started another afternoon job, again....never noticed.

I got hired on as a supervisor for a 2nd job and would regularly just leave green dot to work at the other place.

Here's the thing, I am not proud of this, but for the last 6 or so months they had pissed me off so bad that I just started watching TV and playing video games in the on site gym for hours a day.

Never...ever....noticed. No one....again. I figured I would get in trouble and just quit to keep working at my other full time job. Nope. And hey, if they were paying me to play video games....why turn it down.
 Went on for months until (Get this) another agent complained that I was taking up too much time and THEY couldn't play video games. That's when I was finally discovered. It was kind of ridiculous.

I could have just quit, I should have. That would have been the adult thing to do. But regardless. Leadership is so clueless it took them 6months to realize and even then it was only because another video game loving employee gave them the heads up.