OkCupid Reviews

Pros

I joined the marketing team at OkCupid during the summer of 2019 to focus on the brand's public relations efforts. The experience was exciting and rewarding, and it was a constant growth and learning period for my career. After a little over two years I left for a larger technology company, but quickly missed the impact and opportunities I had in my role at OkCupid. Less than one year after leaving, I re-joined OkCupid. This company feels like home, and I look forward to my new chapter with OkCupid. There also is a new People (human resources) team that is exceptional! They go above and beyond for all of us here at the company, and have created an environment that is collaborative, friendly and welcoming, with tons of in-person and virtual events to keep all of us engaged. I absolutely love coming to work every single day because of them.

Cons

None come to mind! And I'm a boomerang, so you know I mean it :)

Pros

Money is good, remote work policy is flexible, lots of very nice people in IC roles

Cons

It's a legacy product and doesn't get attention from their parent company anymore. The CEO does not have a clear vision and is constantly jumping between ideas that are then either not implemented or implemented in a very scatter shot way. The CPO is a former colleague of the CEO who is just their yes man. He's a smart guy but has no backbone. The best people are taken from okc and moved to other brands (Tinder and Hinge especially), leaving CMO, CTO, and head of finance are all very good, there's absolutely a team in place to make the company successful, but it's being stymied by the CEO.

Pros

The onsite food is good, thats about it.

Cons

The CEO is the most unempathetic leader I have ever seen in my entire life. He lacks vision and care. All he does is support Product to build a crappy product that is a copy of other products like Hinge, Bumble, Spotify etc. There is no creative talent in the organization and the leader is driven only by revenue and not by users or user engagement. . The senior leadership is all male white guys. There is no diversity in the leadership. And everyone sucks up to the CEO and the CPO.

Pros

Good teammates and quality work

Cons

Trouble getting salary increases and general engineering support

Pros

- Product requirements are fleshed out in advance with ample engineering input - Engineers are empowered to research and plan their solutions in advance of diving into feature development - Product development timelines are aggressive enough to ensure that there's always work to accomplish, but not so much that it's overloaded or stressful - Engineers own feature development from the planning stages through execution and release. It feels more rewarding because of the amount of responsibility you're given - The engineering team is lean considering the complexity of the product. It's awesome that there aren't too many cooks in the kitchen - New features are rigorously A/B tested, removing ambiguity and subjectivity from product decisions. Product teams feel more like an equal playing field for this reason - There are tons of amazing office perks! As well as unbeatable benefits when it comes to 401k matching, equity, commuter subsidy, etc - OkCupid itself is a product that welcomes all people and that truly helps build positive and meaningful connections. I am proud about the outcome of my work

Cons

Please keep in mind that the following critiques are ones I would have about EVERY software development job I've had... - The focus is always on building new features. It would be beneficial for the product as well as for the code base if we allocated more time for addressing tech debt, writing unit tests, etc. - Perfection is a moving and evolving target. There are aspects of the code base that aren't great, but then again we are always working to improve them and that's rewarding!

Pros

The bonds you create with other employees that you actually trust is the only pro working here, but these bonds stem from the trauma you've all experienced, not necessarily from something positive that's brought you together as a team.

Cons

The leadership team and CEO have no idea what they're doing. They've been hired to parrot whatever Tinder does, but they somehow make each copy-cat feature less enjoyable. The app feels cheap and empty. The once quirky and charming dating app is a shell of its former self. Actionable items that will actually make the product better and safer are thrown to the curb for features that are designed to make a profit at the expense of actual value, safety, and innovation. I no longer feel comfortable recommending OkCupid to anyone I care about in my life due to the neglect of everything important that keeps members safe and happy.

Pros

Full transparency on most things The ability to have ideas that are listened to 401k match is 100% up to 10% Company holidays + vacation policy truly shines (hint, it's massive) Everyone in the company has an open door policy Things get done fast because processes are streamlined Everyone is super friendly The back to office policy is reasonable and every measure has been taken to make us feel comfortable The in office benefits are incredible The overall comp packages are super competitive

Cons

To be honest, there have been issues that I've raised that have been answered so any potential issues I've had have been met and exceeded

Pros

Marketing material is cute Big on hiring LGBTQ+ and BIPOC employees, if you're part of those communities

Cons

Backend system is broken. Everyone knows this, yet they are amazingly indecisive on owning it vs maintenance. Onboarding process is nothing like the job itself. Nepotism is obvious and kinda unique. New hires are management referrals all the time. You have people who know each other for a long time making decisions for the company at the expense of others and benefit of themselves. Retention rate is embarrassing. Everyone who isn't on the inner circle will leave after their options are vested - and this vacuum is filled internally most of the time. Product is kneecapped in its growth. Best they can get is Tinder's sloppy seconds. This is also why they are the most isolated child of Match Group and a complete afterthought that isn't a huge cost center but won't ever be a big profit center either. Managers care about themselves. They can be replaced by a bot, as they lack empathy, mentorship and decision making skills, and just carry out "business". Actually there are no managers, they're a senior engineer/manager hybrid like Apple but that doesn't really work in this company setup, since the managers have mostly been given the position instead of earning it. Innovation is discouraged since leadership is unable to make pivotal decisions on the engineering direction. By solving a few engineering challenges the company can generate huge momentum to grow dimensionally, but every engineering problem that gets resources allocated is to meet a marketing deadline Pair programming and collaboration between engineers has a high cost to it: your manager will know that you couldn't finish something on your own, and it's a negative point against you. Public Slack channels are basically silent and only used to gloat. It's best to limit your opinions and communication to private messages with folks you predict are trustable, otherwise be aware that public messages are all being monitored carefully by whomever you report to. This is a great tool to paint you as the escapegoat, to hide the larger more difficult issues behind the very pointed and public blame put on you Engineering isn't a very friendly environment. You're not a person, you're another cog in the machine, do as you're told and make the right people happy to earn a promotion or be square.

Pros

- everyone here is really logical and things just don't happen because we're following the whims of a startup ceo - we use data to justify our product decisions and descope engineering tasks to fit deadlines - people are great - fun, interesting, and weird people you enjoy talking to and they do take office culture seriously, quarterly offsites for each product and eng team - lots of opportunity for ownership - it's overwhelming in the beginning - people listen to each other and work to make sure everyone feels heard - good work/life balance

Cons

- technical debt - making progress on it but there is a lot - sometimes you can feel silo-ed because of the cross-functional teams

Pros

Data is central to okc's decision making strategies, and I have no doubt that my team is heard from the start of project all the way through its conclusion. I feel like my ideas are consistently listened to and taken under advisement during a decision making process in ways that I have never been able to experience at larger companies. The small team size also leads to exposure on a lot of different projects, depending on what you're looking for this could be a con as it means you have to be comfortable wearing many hats. If you're comfortable with that kind of responsibility then the exposure to decision makers and the ability to be exposed to different kinds of projects and opportunities are awesome. COVID response has been well-managed, both for employees, and from the business side.

Cons

As mentioned, you have to be comfortable working on new things every so often, there's not a lot of opportunity to just rest on your laurels and not keep contributing.