Oct 1, 2021
Low pay and awful company culture
Anonymous employee
OkCupid
Part of Match Group
Engaged Employer
OkCupid reviews
3.5
64% would recommend to a friend
Ariel Charytan
62% approve of CEO
62% positive business outlook
OkCupid has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 51 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The OkCupid 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
51 reviews
3.0
Sep 30, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Marketing material is cute Big on hiring LGBTQ+ and BIPOC employees, if you're part of those communities
Cons
Backend system is broken. Everyone knows this, yet they are amazingly indecisive on owning it vs maintenance. Onboarding process is nothing like the job itself. Nepotism is obvious and kinda unique. New hires are management referrals all the time. You have people who know each other for a long time making decisions for the company at the expense of others and benefit of themselves. Retention rate is embarrassing. Everyone who isn't on the inner circle will leave after their options are vested - and this vacuum is filled internally most of the time. Product is kneecapped in its growth. Best they can get is Tinder's sloppy seconds. This is also why they are the most isolated child of Match Group and a complete afterthought that isn't a huge cost center but won't ever be a big profit center either. Managers care about themselves. They can be replaced by a bot, as they lack empathy, mentorship and decision making skills, and just carry out "business". Actually there are no managers, they're a senior engineer/manager hybrid like Apple but that doesn't really work in this company setup, since the managers have mostly been given the position instead of earning it. Innovation is discouraged since leadership is unable to make pivotal decisions on the engineering direction. By solving a few engineering challenges the company can generate huge momentum to grow dimensionally, but every engineering problem that gets resources allocated is to meet a marketing deadline Pair programming and collaboration between engineers has a high cost to it: your manager will know that you couldn't finish something on your own, and it's a negative point against you. Public Slack channels are basically silent and only used to gloat. It's best to limit your opinions and communication to private messages with folks you predict are trustable, otherwise be aware that public messages are all being monitored carefully by whomever you report to. This is a great tool to paint you as the escapegoat, to hide the larger more difficult issues behind the very pointed and public blame put on you Engineering isn't a very friendly environment. You're not a person, you're another cog in the machine, do as you're told and make the right people happy to earn a promotion or be square.
5.0
Mar 10, 2019
Exceptional place to learn and build a career
Current employee, more than 3 years
New York, NY
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
******Impact: People can't believe it when I tell them that the Android and iOS mobile teams are only 4 engineers each. The team size is really the sweet spot as they are big enough that we get to learn from each other's coding style and expertise, but small enough that we each get to own the development of entire product features. Team members no matter their tenure are encouraged to open source utilities they build for the app and we are also encouraged to write blog posts and speak at events such as the iOSoho and Brooklyn Kotlin monthly meetups. Over the years, I've worked on so many different types of projects that I feel lucky to have learned everything from custom animations, physics engines, persistence, push notification handling, app store payment flows, unit testing, continuous integration/deployment, and really above all, learning how to write really good, clean, abstract code. ******Growth: One of OkCupid's greatest strengths is that the employees love to communicate and share what they're working on with each other. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and OkCupid has been the perfect place to sharpen just about every skill I would need to start my own company. The marketing team has taught me so much about brand positioning, advertising and engagement. The product team has exceptional rigor with how they validate what to work on next and how to measure success. The data science and analytics team have taught me best practices for experiment setup, hypothesis testing, and proper deployment of experiments across mobile and desktop platforms. The list goes on and on and it's really a credit to OkCupid's open and collaborative work environment. Beyond just skill growth, OkCupid also has very detailed engineering ladders that provide a clear path forward to achieve title and pay promotions. ******Culture: Employees are super friendly, passionate and beyond smart. We have really fun conversations at the lunch table, play video games or board games on Thursdays during our 1-2pm game hour (and let's be honest, most evenings too) and every quarter we go out for a team bonding day. In the past we have gone to Blue Hill farms for a three course meal and tour of the farm, went around New York City on a lobster cruise, spent a weekend at an overnight camp upstate and cooked a meal as part of a cooking class. ******Benefits: We get free catered lunch from a wide variety of NYC restaurants. Our fridge is stocked with everything from Siggi's yogurt, carrots/hummus, string cheese, endless LaCroix, Iced Teas, Harmless Harvest coconut water, La Colombe Coffee etc etc etc. We get $150 a quarter just to go on dates (even if you're in a relationship!) For iOS, OkCupid pays for Apple’s WWDC, for Android it's Google I/O. We even have made some recent improvements to maternity/paternity leave and contributions towards fertility preservation.
Cons
Right now our team size is great for getting everything we need done without working overtime, but I wish management would expand engineering team head counts so we can invest even more time on personal interests beyond company directives.
Viewing 10 - 12 of 51 Reviews
