Great Place To Start - Software Engineer OCLC Employee Review

3.0
Oct 26, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great benefits - Great Mission - Culture is awesome - Notforprofit is a nice touch - Great Direct Manager - Great Developer Coworkers

Cons

- Disconnect between Product people and Developers is great. We are not told why we are told to do certain things, we are not informed of impact, we get no input on any overarching design, and we are expected to be just code monkeys. - Upper management can do a LOT better. CTO right now is Bart Murphy and does not seem to care about my team and what I do at all. Had my team shuffled twice this year and had parts moved to other teams, and the team that I am on is expected to output the same amount of work with half the people. CTO and CFO refuse to let us hire any more. There seems to be a major disconnect and the thought that "it's the people who are wrong". - Pay rate is egregious. After talking to many other software developers here, I was started at 60k a year. That was the starting rate for developers 5 years ago and has since not changed. The maximum raise you can expect is 3% which is barely a cost of living/inflation raise, this being with the highest marks you get on yearly performance reviews. - Tech stack is outdated by 5-15 years with barely any attempt to change. My team maintains applications that are 15+ year old and desperately need to be rebuilt. Falling behind competitors heavily. - Company outlook is not great. Somehow the marketing team is increasing revenue, but our competitors are going to rocket past us in tech and more than likely win out. C Suites don't know what direction to lead the company in and this is the result.

Explore other reviews about OCLC

5.0
Jul 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great team and work environment Interesting work day to day Working here feels meaningful

Cons

Compensation can be lower than average

2.0
Jun 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits, particularly the thrift plan, are good for as long as they still exist. The employees are generally smart and caring people.

Cons

Upper management is neither good nor trustworthy. To go into details would most likely violate this website's TOS. Trust them not to tell you the truth, trust them to blame you if they can save themselves for another year. Any stories you've heard about a great place to work are based on old data. That company no longer exists. While layoffs have always been a threat, employees are constantly on edge now and having the CEO tell them if they want to stay on they shouldn't make trouble does not help, to say the least If you get hired here, understand that this cannot be a long term destination. Get your experience, have an exit plan, don't get comfortable and fade into mediocrity because that is your future, and that's if you are lucky. I just want to add that everything the other reviews say about the president is true. He absolutely did mock employee responses to an opinion survey at a town hall.

3
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