Is Elsevier a good company to work for?

Elsevier has an overall rating of 4.0 out of 5, based on over 2,530 reviews left anonymously by employees. This rating has been stable over the past 12 months. 79% of employees would recommend working at Elsevier to a friend and 76% have a positive outlook for the business. The best reviews about Elsevier have been left by employees working as Software Engineer , Editor and Manager .

Does Elsevier pay their employees well?

According to anonymously submitted Glassdoor reviews, Elsevier employees rate their compensation and benefits as 3.6 out of 5. Find out more about salaries and benefits at Elsevier. This rating has improved by 2% over the last 12 months.

How satisfied are employees working at Elsevier?

79% of Elsevier employees would recommend working there to a friend based on Glassdoor reviews . Employees also rated Elsevier 4.5 out of 5 for work life balance, 4.3 for culture and values and 3.6 for career opportunities.

What are the top reviewed jobs at Elsevier?

Software Engineer (78) , Senior Software Engineer (63) , Account Manager (61) , Product Manager (55) , Journal Manager (49) , Project Manager (37) , Publisher (30) , Director (29) , Editor (28) , Manager (23) , Sales (22) , Editorial Project Manager (20) , Marketing (18) , Software Engineer III (18) , Data Scientist (16)

What are the pros of working at Elsevier according to real employee reviews?

"Flexibility and good work/life balance" ((in 289 reviews)); "You get the chance to work with great people that are very driven and know their subject area very well." ((in 163 reviews)); "Great employees and colleagues" ((in 145 reviews)); "Great company and team to work for." ((in 57 reviews)); "Customers shows lot of respect to the company good work culture" ((in 41 reviews))

What are the cons of working at Elsevier according to real employee reviews?

"We're continued to be asked to develop "world class content" with third world resources and insultingly low salaries." ((in 93 reviews)); "the pay is low but everything else was great" ((in 89 reviews)); "Management on the corporate side is poor with very little business development experience." ((in 81 reviews)); "level and higher managers result in poor leadership and decision" ((in 53 reviews)); "Bad managers aren't re" ((in 50 reviews))

What are employees saying about Elsevier layoffs in 2026?

Explore Glassdoor’s employee reviews to understand what current and former employees are saying about Elsevier layoffs and their outlook for job security at Elsevier in 2026.

What Elsevier locations have received the highest employee ratings?

Gainesville , Pittsburgh , San Diego , Dayton , Tampa , New York

Elsevier reviews

4.0

79% would recommend to a friend

(2,185 total reviews)

Kumsal Bayazit

91% approve of CEO

76% positive business outlook

Ratings by category

4.5

Work/Life balance

4.4

Diversity & inclusion

4.3

Culture & values

3.6

Senior management

3.6

Compensation and benefits

3.6

Career opportunities

Elsevier has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,185 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Elsevier employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media & Communication industry (3.7 stars).

Ratings by demographic groups

Race / Ethnicity

Gender

Sexual orientation

Disability

Parent or family caregiver

Veteran status

Reviews by job title

2K reviews

1.0

Apr 12, 2019

Toxic

User experience

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

Very liberal work-from-home policy, generous vacation (for US :)), convenient downtown location.

Cons

Almost zero top-down transparency about strategy and rationale makes any sort of roadmap planning almost impossible. If you have more than 1-2 sprints (2-4 weeks) of visibility into your work or product backlog, you're in an unusual situation. The Commercial (Sales) team dominates Tech, UX and even Product and makes arbitrary promises to customers to achieve monetary quarterly sales goals, which are paramount. It's basically a custom/bespoke software development agency masquerading as a product company.

3.0

Mar 3, 2018

Not for the ambitious at heart

Marketing director

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work environment and very pro work/life balance and family. Working from home/remotely is generally acceptable. Health benefits are comprehensive but the costs have been increasing significantly every year. It’s a culturally diverse staff. The company is very committed (in theory) to helping advance STM. It’s a great place if you aren’t the ambitious type, like to fly under the radar, and want to put your career on cruise control.

Cons

Pay isn’t competitive and it is a very matrixed organization so things move a glacier pace and rumors and re-orgs happen all the time. The systems we rely on to get things done are legacy, band-aided and don’t talk to each other. On top of having to spend all day working on “stone tablets” and reports no one knows what to do with, many departments are under resourced and forced to use tools and rely on processes that do not work for their specific customer needs (e.g., what works for researchers doesn’t work for clinicians). Finally, you will be expected to work on a laptop that is older than you.

2.0

Mar 4, 2015

Culture slowly disintegrating

Content development specialist

Recommend

CEO approval

Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits used to be good; time off policy is solid and flex time is family friendly

Cons

Promotions aren't correlated with how hard you work or your workload. Benefits continue to be slashed. Health care is only high-deductible now. We're continued to be asked to develop "world class content" with third world resources and insultingly low salaries. Stated core values aren't carried out in practice.

Viewing 13 - 15 of 2,185 Reviews

Jobs at Elsevier

Business Program Manager

Quality Test Engineer III

Elsevier

Elsevier reviews

Ratings by category

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Toxic

Not for the ambitious at heart

Culture slowly disintegrating

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