CoSchedule reviews

Any of the stresses or downsides of the job would be outdated, since I left in 2015. But you might notice that they deleted their Glassdoor in 2020 because reviews were terrible! So here I am again to share my negative experiences. The pay was terrible. Granted, I wasn't worth much when I started, but I was a slave to that place, because I genuinely wanted it to succeed. I know people like to throw around the term "60-hour weeks" haphazardly, but I was working 60-hour weeks. I lived one block from the office, I didn't date, I didn't have any hobbies, I worked constantly. I worked myself into the dirt. This wasn't required, but after three years of this, you really hope the feeling of constant drowning will cease. It never did. People dunk on the CEO and CTO a lot. I mostly got along with them. I played racquetball in the mornings with the CTO. Hell, I helped him move one weekend. I would say that we were very friendly, if not friends. I will say though that the CEO was not a nice guy. Most of the time he was fine, but very clearly idolized Steve Jobs and relished every opportunity to put his foot down and be a jerk if he wasn't satisfied with your work. He's a talented guy with good taste, but I hated working for him... because, well, it was clear he didn't care about us. We were a tool to 10x his way to glory, or something. I don't really know. I finally had enough in 2015, put in my notice, and accepted a job elsewhere in another state. They had strung me along with promises of equity in the company, and it never happened. Something like 6 months later they had a major security breach and attempted to blame me for it. Yes, that really happened. They had their lawyers contact my new workplace. I was cleared, and never heard a peep from them to make things right with me. I still think about how awful it felt to be accused of that by the founders of a company I helped them build. Devastating and brutal. To whomever dares to work here, don't be taken by any hype or suggestion of a work family. Most likely you will eventually be sickened by these guys.

As to the title of this review, many of the salaries 'disclosed' here on Glassdoor are wildly inaccurate. Speaking with colleagues I've found that no one makes anywhere close to what they are claiming. The base pay on the low side for a Product Designer is closer to the pay of a Senior Product Designer. I know that nobody with the word "designer" in their title ever touched the 6 figure mark. The additional pay is laughable. Stock options are only valued in the event the founders sell the company and I refuse to believe they're worth what are being claimed. I got one bonus the entire time I was there and it was because my team and I sacrificed 2 weekends and many hours of sleep in a futile attempt to deliver a project and we still had to negotiate to get that bonus at the end. Finally, the profit sharing is a joke. I got maybe 2 profit-sharing payouts in my time at CoSchedule and they were never in the $5-9k range being claimed for product designers, not even close. Additionally, from what I've gathered, interns are being paid less than I was as an intern at 2 other companies well over 10 years ago. Moving on, much of this has already been said but here it goes. - That culture I mentioned? Quickly vanishing as employees resign en masse or are inexplicably let go. - There is technically a change of control stock option if they ever sold the company but regardless of years of service or promotion the points you get will never change. That really doesn't matter though because I don't know if anyone would buy the company anymore. - Depending on who you directly report to you're going to have a really wildly different experience. One founder will make you feel like he has never worked with anyone more incompetent than you while the other will promise the sun, moon and stars and come back with a flashlight powered by 3-year-old Great Value AAs, a wheel of cheese, and some glitter at best. - Performance reviews are a wild ride at CoSchedule. Not only are they never anywhere near your anniversary date but, they swear by a system where "performance and compensation reviews are separate." Another review mentioned how they were "revamping" the compensation review process. I can tell you that I have heard that line every single year I worked here. My only theory is that they hope you forget about getting a raise. - As far as your day-to-day work goes things have gotten a bit weird but the most frustrating thing by far is that you will plan out these amazing ideas in multiple phases of a project, get about 25% done and then be told to move on leaving most projects only partially done. It's been like this for years. - If you are on the product team, you will be required to literally show your work to founders twice a week regardless of whether you have anything to show (i.e. backend being completed/research or if you've been fixing bugs all week.) These meetings are purely about micro-managing the team. In these meetings (that are notoriously late) you will be told what color to make a button, what the copy of said button should be, or be told to try a new idea only to be told 2 days later that it's a terrible idea. - Those meetings, by the way, can really go in either direction depending solely on the mood of the CEO that day. Prepare to work harder than you ever have only to be told, at best, your work is acceptable. At worst, you will be told in a borderline abusive manner that your work is terrible by someone whose most recent design experience is buying the latest Apple product. - Project management used to be hit or miss at CoSchedule depending on which PM you ended up with. Now it's just miss. If you're a designer, you'll do 100% of the research on requirements, limitations, customer needs, etc. You will also be responsible for all the communication with marketing and QA. Getting anything, including something as simple as a meeting link will take hours and multiple follow-ups. Any suggestions of change or improvement falls on deaf ears or are returned with aggression. - They do, or more accurately did, have a remote status. That said, everyone I've heard who has tried to change their status recently has been denied but given no reason as to why. Gotta justify buying that new building somehow I suppose. - They had this program where if you worked 9 hour days Monday-Thursday you could leave work at noon on Friday called 'Summer Hours' when it was brought up to make a year round option the leadership said "nobody is really asking for it" everybody was in fact asking for it. Take all of that and combine it with cutting every part of the job that made it remotely decent. No more wellness or learning programs, WFH internet reimbursement gone, company parties cancelled indefinitely, 401k match dropped to 1%, layoffs, mass resignations, etc.