OCLC reviews

2.8

35% would recommend to a friend

(283 total reviews)
avatar

David Prichard

28% approve of CEO

26% positive business outlook

OCLC has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 283 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The OCLC employee rating is 27% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

283 reviews
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 - Tech stack is outdated by 5-15 years with barely any attempt to change.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.

2.0
Sep 14, 2017

Management issues

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Renovations look great and give the building a modern feel. Benefits are solid and pay is pretty good too. Work-life balance depends very heavily on your manager, everyone says they support it, but some departments are thinly staffed so most of the time taking off at 5 really just means working from home for a few more hours that night.

Cons

Across the organization I've seen most of the smartest and most talented employees leave or get pushed out. Some managers in particular have very high turnover in their groups but no one seems to care. The company as a whole is much less mission driven and more focused on the bottom line. It's non-profit mission feels more like a marketing tool than a operating principle. CEO markets himself more than his company. His direct reports fight among themselves and take a page from his book focusing more on improving their brand than improving the company.

3.0
Nov 28, 2018

Good benefits, poor management

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits, ability to work from home part of the time.

Cons

For the 20+ years I was there, middle and most of upper management was abysmal. Very few in management had a clue as to how to manage people. Also, most men made 15-25% more than women in the same positions who had been there longer. There was a culture of being very late to meetings or being overbooked and not attending meetings. Many times the same meeting would be held multiple times so that "everyone" could attend. Lots of valuable time wasted.

Viewing 25 - 27 of 283 Reviews

Glassdoor has 333 OCLC reviews submitted anonymously by OCLC employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if OCLC is right for you.