Sama reviews

3.5

82% would recommend to a friend

(480 total reviews)
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Wendy Gonzalez

71% approve of CEO

37% positive business outlook

Sama has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 480 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Sama 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

480 reviews
5.0
Feb 29, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I loved the culture (West Coast, non traditional) and people. Met some of the smartest people I've worked with. The mission is inspiring even though its ambitious. There are good opportunities for advancement.

Cons

The company could be better at communicating and salaries aren't as high as at a for-profit. Some people don't like the office location.

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Sama Response
9y
Thanks for sharing this review. I hope that, since you wrote this, you feel we've improved in terms of communicating and promoting from within -- this kind of feedback is what drove the changes in management practices, and we appreciate it! Also: completely agree with the caliber of the staff. People are our biggest, most treasured asset.
2.0
Feb 15, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great colleagues who, for the most part, are smart and dedicated - Admirable mission: trying to reduce poverty in the developing world in a sustainable way - Well-stocked kitchen - Depending on your role, interesting travel opportunities

Cons

- The CEO is great at inspiring people externally and sharing the Samasource mission. However, she's dismal at internal communication and management. Smart senior managers get hired, aren't enabled to take ownership of their roles and make decisions, become disheartened, and leave after 12-18 months. Then the cycle repeats itself. - This unfortunate cycle means that the organization's growth is incredibly stunted: they effectively have to start over every year. This has led to cash constraints and an overall negative effect on morale and company culture. - Classic "Founder's Syndrome" is at work here. Samasource is 1) too founder-centric (vs. mission-centric); 2) poorly managed (CEO is good externally, poor internally); 3) no succession planning - unclear if management has a plan to have her transition to more of a Chairperson type role; 4) a Board with no teeth.

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Sama Response
9y
Sorry to hear you disapproved of my leadership and our management dynamic. In the last two years, I think our results have demonstrated some really remarkable impact: we've now helped 35,000 people help themselves out of poverty, became profitable from our earned revenue, had almost zero attrition (both in our staff and our workforce of people formerly living in poverty), and hit records for customer service and growth of our technology platform. We've overshot our targets in virtually every area, and communicated this externally via quarterly impact calls (something that very few private companies, let alone nonprofits, do). We also had a record high in our internal employee feedback score (just over 4 out of 5 stars, which I'm proud of given that we are a nonprofit competing on benefits and salaries in the most expensive city in America. Finally, we completed the first-ever third party impact audit from a group of development economists called ImpactMatters, and scored an 8 out of 9, which I am super proud of (I had almost nothing to do with this -- it was driven by our CFO, who runs our financial and impact audits). Always open to feedback on concrete ways to improve, but our management team and board seem aligned and highly responsive (I get a lot of feedback, which I take very seriously, from both groups of people). One perspective I will share here: it's not easy to build an entirely new way of fighting poverty from the ground up, and there will always be staff, board members, and many other people who disapprove of me and the way I run things -- I've been told by some amazing mentors and coaches that this is par for the course as an entrepreneur. But I do hope we are judged as an organization by our real, measurable results for people living in poverty more than anything else :)
5.0
Dec 7, 2015

Agent

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Its the best place to work. with great benefits

Cons

No negative i have noticed

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Sama Response
9y
Thank you so much for your feedback! Feel free to add cons if you have them :)
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Glassdoor has 660 Sama reviews submitted anonymously by Sama employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sama is right for you.