IXL Learning Reviews

- Whether it was fair or not, I got the sense that a majority of IXL employees didn't feel fully empowered in their roles. Most employees are hired to execute IXL's vision, not to define it. - Roles are narrowly defined and many have repetitive responsibilities. Cross-team internal mobility is rare, which exacerbates this problem. This model might work well for some, but it wasn't ideal for me, and I found growth difficult. - Decision making power is heavily concentrated at the top of the org chart. The CEO & COO are still very active in all facets of the product & company operations. It's possible to earn enough trust to have a say in major decisions, but for most that's a very long process. To be fair, the CEO & COO have a strong feel for the product and its users, and other people who earn decision making power usually are the highest performers. - Concentrated decision making would be more OK (I doubt any successful companies use consensus decision making as a long term strategy) if the strategy-level decisions were more frequently good ones. Despite the CEO's track record as a 'visionary' in the space (it's admittedly very good), recent decisions have been more miss than hit. - The company is slow moving. This is in part because the quality standard is so high, which is a good thing, but it takes a long time to get to obvious features, and smaller teams in the space are moving at a faster pace, which gives me doubts about the company maintaining its level of success long term. - The CEO's management policy could be described as "my door is always open, but I'm not going to be the one to walk through it". The longer I was at the company, the more I get the sense that he was out of touch with the culture / problems on the ground. - HR was kind of a mess and difficult to work with. - Given the timing and content of a lot of the reviews here, I am strongly suspicious that many of them are fake. A lot of fluff reviews appear after bad ones, and most of the people I knew at IXL would have more insightful pros/cons than the benefits (they're fine but hardly notable -- average to slightly below average for the area depending on the role) and vague notions of 'growing pains'. If those suspicions are true (again, no hard evidence), that's a disservice to potential candidates because it buries valuable opinion with misleading information, and I find that personally insulting.

1 bad management thats coming top down. Good luck getting constructive feedback. You are expected to figure everything out on your own. Managers hire and fire like it's nothing. Truthfully I can't even count the number of people who have been fired with no warning or plans 2 company promotes all managers from within, and they only promote the best puppets for their masters. No manager has their own thoughts or have been given any kind of training. Most managers are very young, manage 10 people or more 3 ixl puts up fake reviews on glassdoor. Proof - Look for two bad reviews written around end of june, and check out the flood of good 5 star reviews within the week afterwards. Come on...so Desperate 4 no career path, they hire new grads and pay poorly because they know youre desperate for tech experience. When you ask for a raise or career path, make sure you are either a salesperson and/or a male. Otherwise, good luck. I have seen at least 5 women put on improvement plans, most of those people either left because they were pushed out or they got fired first. No men have ever gotten an improvement plan here.. sexism at its finest.