Duolingo reviews

4.1

79% would recommend to a friend

(163 total reviews)

Luis von Ahn

88% approve of CEO

39% positive business outlook

Duolingo has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 163 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Duolingo 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

163 reviews
3.0
Dec 9, 2024

bad for your mental health

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

love the mission and the products.

Cons

I enjoyed working with most of the people, but the culture often felt cliquish. Many tenured managers and directors seemed to hold their positions more due to longevity than capability, leading to questionable decision-making. There was a noticeable imbalance in accountability—while you were expected to answer to them, they often didn’t reciprocate the same respect or responsibility. Respect and inclusion often felt contingent on personal favoritism rather than professionalism, creating an atmosphere that at times resembled an old high school clique. This environment can take a toll on one’s mental health, especially if you find yourself on the bad side of or disliked by a clique member, as it can lead to feelings of isolation or unfair treatment.

5.0
Jul 12, 2015

A Dream Job

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The opportunity to actually contribute to a worthwhile mission of free language education for the work that all of your coworkers believe in 100%. - Working with talented, motivated, and intelligent people. - Code you write may be deployed and start benefiting millions within the same day. Duolingo provides the opportunity to have actual impact. - An excellent culture of camaraderie, anti-bureaucracy, and fun! Catered daily lunches with all coworkers around the same table. Dinner if you want to stay late. - Flexible hours, great benefits, awesome and frequent social events. - The honor of working for a down-to-earth, genuine, and truly compassionate CEO.

Cons

Many of us are slight workaholics because we enjoy our jobs so much. It is sometimes difficult to balance a personal life outside of work.

5.0
Aug 20, 2014

Amazing Time at Duolingo

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Duolingo is AMAZING for so many reasons! It was so easy to feel great and proud about the product... providing free language education for the world?! .. while you are learning languages on the job in a multicultural international team of really motivated, skilled people?! Yes! This helped for integrity, because language specialists or mentors interfaced with the community and did not need to hide any bad stuff. Duolingo is led by two co-founders who are ingenious, have an amazing intuition and impressive work ethic. They are open for feedback and have a sense of humor. Yes, there is room for improvement but that is self-understood, comes with being under 35 and leading such a start-up. As for training? There was a lot of on-the-job learning. Co-workers were open to teach you things and hackathons were great occasions to self-teach yourself things. But with about 40 employees, this company is just about to get big enough for formal training. Occasional programming classes were attempted. So this is a future need and something to ask for. Time-off policies, vacation days, flexibility, working remotely etc. No problem. They seemed to be very open to find solutions that work both for Duolingo and the employee's situation. No complaints, seriously. E.g. as a language expert, you gotta go home to freshen up your skills, so there was support. Compensation. Alright for language specialist. Probably better for designers and engineers, which is an overall issue in the industry.

Cons

No reliable formal training. Duolingo could benefit from formal training for employees with less skills. Targeted activities to improve office culture. While there were many fun activities that surely helped, Duolingo could benefit from some professionally guided interventions. E.g. on cross-cultural communication, working with remote teams etc. Not enough life for some people in the more demanding positions. But this is probably the case for all young start-ups. Employees were needed after hours, on weekends and quick at times.

Viewing 10 - 12 of 163 Reviews

Glassdoor has 285 Duolingo reviews submitted anonymously by Duolingo employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Duolingo is right for you.