Symetra reviews

4.0

73% would recommend to a friend

(483 total reviews)

Margaret Meister

88% approve of CEO

82% positive business outlook

Symetra has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 483 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Symetra employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Insurance industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

483 reviews
2.0
Aug 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great friendly people to work with, reasonable work-life balance and flexibility. Downtown Bellevue location and casual dress code are plusses. Competitive benefits package. Salaries are at the low end of market competitive.

Cons

Upper management is very out of touch with business reality, trying to make a small to medium size company into an industry giant. Some huge misfires on product development that cost the company millions of dollars. Antiquated IT infrastructure makes doing your job exceedingly difficult, and lack of commitment to invest in improvements. Many examples of favoritism by senior management, hiring their cronies from East Coast companies who also do not contribute to a unified growth strategy for the company. Culture varies greatly by department, some are managed well, others create a blame based environment which is not conducive to teamwork or productivity. There is lip service given to employee development but during my tenure the employee development group was downsized at a critical growth period in the company's history.

2.0
Aug 13, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

good group of hardworking folks at the bottom tier; standard benefits package; good downtown location in Bellevue;

Cons

you get promoted super fast if you have the right connections to upper mgmt. For example, in order to promote an inexperienced manager with connection to become a finance director, they forced out a knowledgeable director. There are no more diversity in the management group. They are now 100% white female only. If you are a pretty blonde female, you will do very well in the Finance org. If you are not, you are better off working for another company. Also, the only way that you will get a raise here is when you submit your two-weeks notice - that's when they went into panic mode & try to match what your new company pays you.

1.0
Mar 26, 2014

One of the worst

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Close to bus stop, good restaurants

Cons

The IT department here is awful. 5 Development Managers have left or been asked to leave in the last year. If they don't get their act together soon, they will choke on there technological debt. The CIO has caused a deep current of mistrust within the department, The staff simply doesn't believe him anymore. Recently, things have become so bad, the CFO addressed the IT staff asking them to talk to her before posting anything here. No one will ever do that because of the IT Department upper managements' history of shooting the messenger. HR has asked people to post positive reviews here to try to overcome all the negatives.

avatar
Symetra Response
12y
I’m sorry you had a disappointing experience at Symetra. The IT department reports to me, and I am committed to upgrading our technology and making this a company where our technology professionals feel that they are an essential part of making Symetra into a national player in the life insurance industry. To accomplish this I want to build an IT organizational that speaks openly about issues be they technology limitations or cultural issues. I need straight shooting and candid input -- which is why I asked IT people to reach out to me directly. Many of these posts don’t give me much insight into the real causes of dissatisfaction — which we can address much more effectively if we work together. I invite any employee — current or past — to share with me your insights about working at Symetra. I will keep your feedback totally confidential, and I will take it seriously. My email address is cfofeedback@symetra.com. -Margaret Meister
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Glassdoor has 557 Symetra reviews submitted anonymously by Symetra employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Symetra is right for you.