17 Sept 2022
Rosetta Stone Reviews
3.5
55% would recommend to a friend
John Hass
66% approve of CEO
45% positive business outlook
Rosetta Stone has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 496 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Rosetta Stone 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
496 reviews
2.0
28 May 2016
Realize that the non-5 star reviews here are the honest ones
Anonymous employee
Former employee, more than 3 years
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Over my time with Rosetta Stone, I truthfully can say that I was treated very well while working at the company. In the product organization, nearly everyone just worked incredibly well together, with very little conniving activity (with the exception of a few bad apples, but eventually are weeded out because of a poor culture mismatch). I was always given much respect by my manager and colleagues and also given the opportunity to change my career path or try something new within the organization on a different team. The product org is almost completely distributed, meaning you will certainly be working with a virtual team across the US and India. If you enjoy working from home, the fact that the teams are set up this way will ensure little reason to get into the office unless you choose to for the social aspect. Very few managers are actually located in the same city as they direct reports (speaking for the product organization only). The company used to offer some offices, not all, a plethora of snacks and drinks but due the poor financial state of the company, this was discontinued. There are a lot of caring people within the product organization and if you are fortunate enough to get one of these people as a manager, you will certainly be in good hands with them at your back. There seemed to be no micromanagement that I ever bore witness to. The unlimited PTO is a nice touch to have available, as long as it's not abused obviously. I do suspect this change was made due to the high number of layoffs that occur so the company wouldn't be obligated to pay out vacation time in states where this is a legal obligation.
Cons
Realize, that all of these gleaming reviews here with little context saying how great the company is and how it's experiencing growing pains are almost certainly being produced by the HR department. Before you get too involved with a role with interviewing for a role with the company, take a look at the very poor company performance over the past few years. It has only trended down, and while I hope this changes there is little to point that this will happen. The truth is that your future is about as uncertain as the direction the company's own. Year after year, they have had massive layoffs, typically laying off hundreds of employees. There is not much you can do to protect yourself either, as they layoff every role from Kiosk workers to developers. Make sure you are keeping an eye out for new jobs around the end of February to mid-March each year, because as certain as there will be a new iPhone each year, Rosetta Stone will be laying off employees. The direction that the company decides to pursue has changed countless times over the past few years. Every couple of quarters you will hear about a new "pivot" that the company is deciding to pursue because the previous one isn't working out. While this impact on your complacency with the role you're in would be minimal, it's rather annoying as you will certainly be shifted around from project to project before the products you're building can get to a point of maturity. Please note that day-to-day life is not miserable as the people you're working with are a bunch of great people. You won't be unhappy here because of a poor work environment, I just don't believe you will ever get a strong sense of permanency due to the continuously shifting company direction and annual layoffs. Also, the pay is not on par with the industry standard; it is much lower which is understandable when there is little profit being made.
3.0
28 Sept 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Mostly it's staffed by true native English speakers, including much of the management, so communication is never an issue.
Cons
They promote themselves as different from the regular conversation schools. Leaders all the way up to the CEO talk about this, but when you are actually in the system, it's a regular conversation school - they tell you anything they think you want to hear (including untruths) as long as you teach lessons. Question anything and you are expendable.
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