Cover Genius Reviews

2.9

48% would recommend to a friend

(169 total reviews)

Angus McDonald

56% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Cover Genius has an employee rating of 2.9 out of 5 stars, based on 169 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Cover Genius employee rating is 25% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

169 reviews
1.0
23 Apr 2024

It’s all an illusion

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good engineering practices and the use of up to date technology. Nice office.

Cons

Where should I start, first as has been mentioned many of these 5 star reviews are by new starters who still have their rose colored lenses on, like I did. At first you’ll think they have a good inviting culture, but with time you’ll realize it’s an illusion. Many people in management have complexes and egos that you need to be good at handling, otherwise they’ll view you as a dissident. Feedback is never taken seriously. Performance review is a joke as can be attested by many people at the company. HR and management conspire on their own employees and try to gaslight them into thinking they are bad to get rid of them. Expects you to slave your way into being looked at as “performing above average”. Depending on who you work with, collaboration can be frowned on as you are supposed to be self reliant.

1.0
20 July 2023

Questionable management practices

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Benefits - wfh policy - Generally nice people

Cons

- Employees all need to pretend to agree with a Co-founder who micromanages every department. This figure needs to be 100% correct 100% of the time (even when he has no idea or context about the work), and if you argue with them you will get benched or worse - A company that seems to have spent too freely during it's growth phase and is now regretting it as everything is slowing down

2.0
1 Sept 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Often the work is interesting - There are real challenges which require solving - Lately there's been some good company events - Many really smart people

Cons

- Too much bureaucracy - Benefits are pale in comparison to other tech startups, let alone established players - Constant uncertainty and unexpected changes in priority. Instead of having a vision for the products we are building and working towards a roadmap to get there, we are always reactionary - driven by random requirements and deadlines from partnerships. Deadline-driven development is the style of work the product team is forced to do, no cohesiveness. - Most exec team leaders have shown to genuinely not care about staff - Micromanagement and lack of trust in team from some people at the top - One thing is announced, and several months later, something totally different is done - usually with no announcement, usually to the detriment of staff - Almost unbelievably or comically poor communication/cooperation between different parts of the company, and the company leadership just doesn't seem to care - Transparency is an ongoing problem, but like many things, execs don't understand what transparency is - Culture and values are a joke, if you ask 10 different people what the culture is, you will get either different answers or a blank stare. By definition there is no culture.

avatar
Cover Genius Response
6y
[The following response is from Chris Bayley, Co-Founder] Thanks for giving us feedback. We accept that things aren't perfect so we always appreciate the chance to respond. Some of the things you've highlighted are being addressed and we've outlined the large amount of work being done by our People team over the next 6-12 months. As you've said, there's no easy solutions, but we are working on it. You made some points about benefits and culture. While we accept that many tech companies compete for talent through their benefits packages, we have always focused ours on things that really matter. Our generous health and wellness policy has been updated in line with the cultural value of "make it your own" so we're now covering whatever H&W charges you prefer. Similarly, one can choose their preferred schwag from a growing list, up to a budget. Our "CG Gives" microfinance program has also commenced with the team generously lending +$20K of company-matched bonuses to their preferred entrepreneurs in developing countries. We expect that the CG Gives program will lend over $100K in 2020 which is an extraordinarily generous contribution that aligns with the Founders' mission to enable social entrepreneurship and subsequently improve global financial literacy, a value encompassed by our "make it better" value. Our culture programs and other issues that you've raised derive from our historical funding situation. We are bootstrapped and frugal rather than venture-backed and, to be polite, less sustainable. The beneficiaries of this approach are undoubtedly our team members who are rewarded via our generous employee equity plan. Our EOP is unique within the tech industry; it ensures that the upside is truly significant when the company does well. This wouldn't be achievable if we were VC funded. We also accept that self-funded startups experiencing very high growth also mean the imperfections are writ large; there's less people to do the work, more context switching and there's going to be uncertainty when we're doing things that have never been done in one of the world's largest and oldest industries. As the team grows we're comfortable that this will change and the ride will be less bumpy! Thanks again for contributing. - Chris Bayley, Co-Founder
Viewing 1 - 3 of 169 Reviews

Glassdoor has 196 Cover Genius reviews submitted anonymously by Cover Genius employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Cover Genius is right for you.