Great Minds reviews

3.1

47% would recommend to a friend

(313 total reviews)
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John White

76% approve of CEO

44% positive business outlook

Great Minds has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 313 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Great Minds employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

313 reviews
2.0
Jun 4, 2019

No One Stays

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Teleworking available, good product, mission-driven, & good benefits.

Cons

Toxic Environment! Career paths go 1 of 3 ways at Great Minds: 1) New hires are terminated within a few months of their hire date (this holds true for executive and entry-level new hires). 2) Employees stick around for 1-2 years, and are then driven away by the toxic environment. 3) Employees staying 2+ years become grizzled veterans who now await the inevitability that they will sneeze in the wrong direction and be terminated. The case of Great Minds is disappointing -- it really is a company that has so much unrealized potential. It is an organization that produces fantastic products with people who are exceptionally talented and mission-driven. The toxic culture can be found throughout, but some teams are impacted much more so than others, and employees who are fully remote may be shielded from some of the toxicity. What makes the environment at Great Minds so toxic? Highest turnover rate I have ever seen at an organization; employees are fired for arbitrary reasons every day; nepotism!; poor pay relative to market; few & poor internal promotion opportunities; poor (or often no) decision making from upper management; not enough inter-departmental interaction (and departments are certainly not regarded equally by upper management)

2.0
May 24, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote and flexible schedule. I absolutely love the people I work with. Great benefits. Work-life balance is encouraged. I believe in our products. Autonomy.

Cons

They've gone 'for-profit' so now they're downsizing. The way they're doing the downsizing is completely misguided and shows no regard for us as humans. While they're terminating great people, they're hiring outside people for other positions. They're cutting salaries for the people who make the cut from the downsizing. They spent a ton of money on central offices, even though the majority of us are remote. Everything absolutely could be remote for all. Oh, and they bought a real dinosaur skeleton when money is short? The CEO's salary and many other upper-level peoples' salaries are posted by a DC watchdog site, so I'll go ahead and throw what I see they're making into my list of things that disgust me. We're all reapplying for our jobs so they're not actually laying us off. I'm sure they avoid some financial responsibility there, and in the process they're making us all grateful if we get an offer, even if the pay is significantly less than we make now. Well-played. They're not interviewing for most positions. Who will be rehired is supposedly based on how we answered 5 questions in writing. A year ago I would have said 100% positive things about this job, so I'm basically heartbroken.

1.0
Dec 11, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

great colleagues and peers -- and everyone shares your pain and tries to help

Cons

What a total mess and disregard for the loyalty and commitment that the staff has made. All the prior reviews describe the mass layoffs and the shocking disregard for people's well being. But what kills me is that the CEO and her minions claimed it was to save money. Ok, then, how does the CEO justify having paid herself millions over the years and giant bonuses every year. She put us in this awful place over years of running the company into the ground and then rewards herself. For years, while a non profit company, Great Minds had to file a PUBLIC 990 form that anyone can Google; they have to be publicly posted. Take a look and you'll see that the CEO was paying herself close to a million dollars a year. Just outrageous. All at the same time she was building a huge new HQ a few blocks from her home so her kids to go over and play with a giant dinosaur. Wow, use the company treasury to pay yourself millions, build an absurdly large HQ so you never have to go more than a few blocks from home and then get some wildly expensive dinosaurs in the lobby so your kids have day care. All while the staff gets told time to tighten belts and get fired at the holidays. Not Great Minds, but Great Ripoff.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 313 Reviews

Glassdoor has 346 Great Minds reviews submitted anonymously by Great Minds employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Great Minds is right for you.