Chess.com Reviews

4.1

74% would recommend to a friend

(92 total reviews)
avatar

Erik Allebest

84% approve of CEO

62% positive business outlook

Chess.com has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 92 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Chess.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

92 reviews
1.0
14 Feb 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You can play chess while at work...

Cons

Although the leadership was reluctant to admit it, Chess.com was preparing for a public IPO. The company struggled to meet IPO requirements, leading to intense micromanagement of the entire engineering department. The situation was dire—made worse by the fact that power was concentrated in the hands of a single individual: the Chess.com CTO, who exercised control over the entire company. Poor communication, a confusing culture, and a toxic environment of backstabbing. There were a dozen of YES man always trying to make the CTO happy. To me, the company was more about ChessCTO.com.

5.0
26 Aug 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Working at chess.com is so enjoyable. We are fully remote which can be difficult at times but with such a large team and work always to do - working remote really isn't an issue. My favorite part of chess is that management cares deeply about us. Once a year they take the entire team somewhere awesome and we all hang out. Each week we are required to fill out a 1-on-1 with our development lead and the CEO. Every single time I've brought up something that's an issue, they've addressed it and fixed it. The CEO has even sent out forms for us to fill out which have us express what we are unhappy about and what we'd change if we were the CEO. They truly care about you as an employee and that's a rare thing to find. They encourage growth and learning always. They love suggestions and new ideas. They love when you apply something new you've learned, etc. For some people who generally would consider themselves "full-stack" but are on "front-end" only, they have taken our requests and pair us up with backend devs so we can fill that desire to work full-stack. We have an excellent and modern workflow with multiple deployments daily, thorough reviews of code, and all the things you'd expect a large dev company to have. The schedule is extremely flexible and they encourage life > work. You never get the feeling someone is keeping tabs on your every minute. They just want you to enjoy what you do and of course, not take advantage of the flexibility. Lastly, they make you feel worth something and an important part of the team. They constantly are encouraging my work and make it known weekly how valued and important you are. I feel like sometimes I have to take a second and realize that all this is in fact genuine since I have never had an experience like it. I truly plan to stay here a long time.

Cons

I'll have to be honest that I really don't have any serious cons. If I could think of one thing it would be creating a little more hierarchy. It's a pretty flat company with only a few leads, and this is intentional and works well. But sometimes it would be nice to feel as though you've been promoted, etc.

1.0
28 Aug 2024

Wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It's hard to think of any when they take away your livelihood

Cons

They lay you off via email while the CEO jumps from podcast to podcast touting the platform's immense user growth and profitability. If that's the kind of culture you're looking for then this is the place for you

Viewing 1 - 3 of 92 Reviews

Glassdoor has 152 Chess.com reviews submitted anonymously by Chess.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Chess.com is right for you.