RealSelf Reviews

Pros

Honestly, I worked here for about two years and I was able to learn and grow so much within my role. Coming in at a point where there was fast growth, I was able to experience it with an amazing team and a wonderful manager. She taught me how to perform various functions of my job and the best part was giving me the ownership to manage these processes and find ways to improve them, or even create my own. Being able to...

Cons

I was fortunate enough to work for a fantastic finance team with a great manager, and the only cons I can think of were the rapid growth the company faced at times. With much work to do, there were only so many people able to do it all but a pro to add to this is that I was not alone through any of it. The major con is that no other company (at least that I can think of) will be able to top this so RS sets the bar super...

Advice to Management

Giving your employees ownership and letting their voices be heard will definitely benefit the team/company over time.

Pros

Workspace, Diversity, Mentoring-culture, Work-area, and Location. Ownership of one's career path is delegated to the individual.

Cons

- Dev-Stack is a bit on the old side

Advice to Management

- Progress the engineers who are fundamental to the company to the next level

Pros

This company is a very caring company, does the right thing for its employees and customers. The diversity is impressive. Many strong women leaders as well as overall leaders with diverse backgrounds. The location is sweet and I (and my dog) enjoy the dog-friendly environment. The market we are in is virtually untapped and is growing. Also, some recent departures have made the future a little brighter since there was...

Cons

There are some issues with traffic to the site and SEO and it's something they've never had to deal with before so it's taking a bit of work to get into the groove with this new challenge. It's been reassuring to see them respond and increase communications to the team about the issues but it still makes for a stressful time at work with rebuilding the team and product. RealSelf will be stronger in the end but the growing...

Advice to Management

Don't worry about the people who jump ship because their lack of commitment to doing the right things to make things better is not a loss. This is Seattle and there is a lot of great talent in the market.

Pros

The parts of this company that really shine are what keep most people extremely dedicated to what they do and remain unmatched at any other company in Seattle right now: * The brilliant people you get to work with. RealSelf has amazing talent on staff and nearly every department has someone who is an outlier at the top of their field. * IT readiness, support, and on-boarding. This team is on point and extremely friendly...

Cons

After being in business as a leader in the space for so long and relying on a business model susceptible to damn near everything, the company still struggles to find a clear direction forward to put in place a model for sustainable growth that serves both the doctors and the users seeking information. * The mission of arming users with un-biased information to enable them to make informed decisions is wholesome, but...

Advice to Management

Empower your people. Stop hiring top talent and then relegating their opinions and work to the back burner in favor of consultants. Empower your people. Stop giving lip-service to employees who are asking for real changes in the leadership. Empower your people.

Pros

Biggest pro by far is an a culture that values open communication and cooperation. I constantly reached out to other dev teams with product/engineering questions, and I was never reprimanded for frequently offering help where I could. There are several "help please" and "department-xxx-questions" slack channels where employees can ask questions which sometimes spawn 20+ response threads filled with great, engaged answers...

Cons

Re-orgs are a common occurrance. It looks like teams are shuffled and priorities change about every year, which sometimes make long term initiatives hard to keep alive if started at all (tech debt refactoring, security concerns, difficult UX bugs). As a result, theres a lot of mixed architecture and dangling initiatives everywhere. Also the company went from being a small team to a mid-size one quite rapidly, so at...

Advice to Management

I know you guys have expressed how we've been incapable of committing to long term initiatives, but some conviction needs to be shown. Do that, and I'm sure you'll inspire more confidence in the workplace.

Pros

Friendly people Dogs Snacks, beer, kombucha, cider, sparkling water and such and such Gym & parking subsidized Thoughtful office space for different types of work (Though still open floor plan) Fun events and personal development opportunities like Home Buying 101 or Pie day bake offs As with any company, your experience will depend on your team and leadership

Cons

Lack of clear direction leads to goals set at the beginning of the quarter that are never the same goals at the end. Often there aren't even clear goals set at either the beginning or the end. Attempts at career path opportunities and defining levels are inconsistent across the company Many changes to executive managment underway or recently made Lots of talking the talk, but less walking the walk Still a stigma around...

Pros

Through the ups and downs, strong leadership is key to any growing company. Our leadership teams listen to the people and provide answers, feedback, transparency, with most cases being all of the above. From people and product management, to our executive team, all the way to our CEO Tom Seery, we have an open door policy of leaders who really do care. Even in harder times, our leaders are approachable and thoughtful,...

Cons

We still operate like a start up and move fast which for some can be hard. If you are looking for a corporate role where your role is similar everyday, minimal change, this is not the place for you. This is a con only because some people really struggle here, especially recently which can really drag down the morale with negativity.

Advice to Management

Keep investing in the people, especially new hires and (new)managers. We have lost some key people on our "people team" who were champions of education and culture, so keep an eye on our morale. We have worked very hard on our culture, let's keep people happy, and hiring the right people to keep our culture alive!

Pros

Great company culture. Tries really hard to create a place where employees are valued. Focused on being mission and value driven. Good benefits, Fair Pay. Office Snacks. Great Pioneer Square location.

Cons

The business and model just doesn't have much of a future. Don't let anyone fool you - its not a high growth tech unicorn. Its a SEO marketing and sales company that needs to figure out how to be as lean and optimized as possible to drive profits. Don't get me wrong it has a future to be really successful at a fairly narrow charter. But its not going to disrupt the beauty and elective treatment space as is....

Advice to Management

Decide what you want to be - a market disruptor or a web review marketplace circa 2010? You can actually probably do either but one requires sacrifice, focus, and probably a stronger leadership team. And to disrupt the market you've got to be willing to disrupt yourself and its not clear you have the stomach for it. If you just want to do your thing, that is fine too. Just scale back, let it work and let some...

Pros

When everything is status quo at a company and they treat their employees well, that says something about them. But during a time of transformation and many moving parts, if they still treat people well, that says even more. Recently, RealSelf laid off several employees. Like anyone getting laid off, I was scared about my next steps and felt caught off-guard, but RealSelf quickly turned my worries into hopefulness...

Cons

None besides that they had to downsize.

Pros

Org actually cares about you. Still a strong and thriving, scrappy start up mentality and feel.

Cons

No cons that I can think of at this time.

Advice to Management

Continue to drive operational excellence and raising the bar!