GreatSchools Reviews

3.2

51% would recommend to a friend

(36 total reviews)

Jon Deane

52% approve of CEO

19% positive business outlook

GreatSchools has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 36 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The GreatSchools employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

36 reviews
1.0
3 Sept 2015

A Company that Steals from Itself

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great if you are a parent needing a flexible schedule. Engineers, specifically, are treated respectfully, and have great managers and mentorship. Relaxed, airy, bright work environment, with a ping pong table and snacks in a large breakroom. Good place to get started if you want to work and learn engineering at the same time.

Cons

Apologies for the formatting. Glassdoor isn't great at recognizing spacing. [Note to UX Design] Insidious work environment made up of greedy, nepotistic VPs and Directors who get paid exorbitantly while undercutting the salaries of entry-level employees by 40 percent of those employees’ market value. They take all-expense-paid ski trips, then tell employees that the company can't afford to pay them market rate because the company is non-profit. The company basically exists to funnel money into the pockets of 10 people in power. The core values and mission are fine (even if they don't make a lot of logical sense sometimes), but certainly aren't followed by the people leading the organization. You might not see a worse place that masquerades as a caring company while harming its employees. As a nonprofit, it's worse than a bottom-line-driven company, because at least the bottom-line companies are transparent about how they operate. Here are the company Core Values: HIGH EXPECTATIONS FUEL SUCCESS There may be high expectations, but there is little support from management or HR, so most of the time it’s a burden, not a motivator. NOTHING BEATS INFORMED INTUITION This may as well say “We use whatever data furthers our revenue agenda.” TRANSPARENCY BUILDS TRUST Yes, it does! But there is little to no transparency at this organization, internally or externally. Everything is a secret, and many employees operate in fear of reprisal for speaking up. DREAMS KINDLE DISCOVERIES “We at GreatSchools understand that we all need time for play, contemplation and cultivating personal interests.” Yes! Except there are few professional development opportunities, and the culture of the office itself is limp and lacks cohesiveness, and is permeated by the irresponsibility of those that wield the power. WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER Except we aren’t. If you’ve read this far, you can see why. These VPs will create new positions and hire from within only to fire those people a month later, and assimilate the job into their own. The whole company revolves around how much power can be grabbed from those without much to spare. Additionally, there is micromanagement abound, with control-freak bosses who are never around, communicate poorly, and who then wonder why the company community suffers. When management is confronted, there is a lot of business-babble that makes no sense and dodges the questioning. This is a tech company, first and foremost, and the people in charge, aside from the excellent tech team leaders, refuse to let it develop that way because it means the currently-useless VPs will lose power to smarter, more organized, more compassionate people. The above should be enough to steer anyone away, but on top of it all the benefits are poor compared to comparable organizations, contractors are actually paid LESS than full-timers (the reverse is usually the norm), and unless you are an engineer there is zero dedicated professional development (even then it isn't great). This is a place that tries to keep its employees from leaving, by blocking professional development opportunities and destroying community from within, and when the employees are finally fed up, they get replaced with idealistic young people who don't realize the political environment they are entering. The VPs and C-levels will step on your neck to keep power, and the archaic values of the basically defunct (and part-time) HR department won't protect employees from that (nor the borderline sexual harassment of the top brass, which is a whole other discussion).

2.0
19 Oct 2015

A Chaotic Place to Work

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A lot of people enjoy the flexible work hours

Cons

Ever shifting priorities, poor/absentee leadership, poorly defined projects/goals, and a crazy high turnover rate (literally 1/3 of the company quit in 2015 and there have been three waves of layoffs since 2013)

1.0
20 Dec 2016

a case study in dysfunction

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Many employees that come to GreatSchools do so because they believe in the power of education and that they can do something to help America's families achieve a better future. They also come to learn and grow themselves professionally. Therefore, there is generally a friendly and helpful atmosphere among the staff. And as everyone else says, the work-life balance is good.

Cons

1. The productivity of the company is compromised due to the very high proportion of upper management vs. capable “doers.” For example nearly half of GreatSchools’ employees have the title of President, VP, or Director. While not everyone with those titles is without value of course, this is a case of a non-profit built more for organizational bloat and pretense rather than for making a useful technology product. 2. The company is unable to stand on its own monetarily. They come to rely on the crutch of a couple large grants from national donors, which are not always renewed. In the last 8 years there have been three major layoffs. In June of 2016 nearly half of all staff was let go while no one in upper management was. It was a consistent lack of focus, inability to make decisions among the braintrust, and a profound inability to become self-sustaining that brought the company to that point. 3. Lack of accountability among leadership, in place of that there is a highly political environment with tendencies to finger point. That will often include VPs throwing people in their department under the bus in order to save face or gain favor with other department heads.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 36 Reviews

Glassdoor has 38 GreatSchools reviews submitted anonymously by GreatSchools employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if GreatSchools is right for you.