1. Do no believe any 4 or 5 star reviews. CoStar is sneaky, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planted. Everyone I met absolutely hates working there. Someone mentioned that CoStar is now encouraging freshly trained, inexperienced employees to enter favorable reviews. I cannot confirm, but it would not surprise me.
2. DO NOT MOVE TO RICHMOND! The CEO is an egotistical flake and has been known to layoff dozens to hundreds on moment's notice. Richmond has poor employment prospects and a very low wage base, which means you'll be stuck paying rent on an apartment that will no longer be needed if you or your division gets axed. There is a reason why Richmond is the HQ: low wages, limited employment prospects. You will be entering a glorified prison camp if you move.
3. Do not listen to the recruiters, they are absolute liars. They know CoStar is a terrible place to work, but they have hiring quotas so they'll be fired if they underperform. In other words, they lie about advancement, OTE earning potential and everything else. They're trying to save their own skins.
4. The middle managers are worthless. They cannot help you as their hands are tied by Andy, the CEO. If they give him honest feedback, they'll get canned. All they do is generate meaningless reports and fire people who underperform on paper. And that leads me to the Fifth reason.
5. Everything is measured, and everyone lies about the numbers. This is not a sales job, it is a boiler room sales operation. CoStar demands an aggressive number of calls per day, visits per months and what not. The numbers are not sustainable. The customers are tired of hearing what you and your previously fired predecessors have to say. Many won't answer the phone, and even the nice ones who do answer hate CoStar. So what do you and all the other sales people do? They lie about how many people they've talked to. Some even take a day off and pretend their visiting clients on the road. They do it to preserve their jobs and their sanity.
6. Clawbacks on sales commission. Yes, they recalculate your commish if you're in sales. In any given month you'll earn less than you thought.
7. There is a reason why you were hired: the previous sales person failed as the assigned market stinks. The sales person previous to him or her was fired for that reason. And you will be fired for that reason. It's just a case of musical chairs.
8. The legacy sales people have the best territories and they'll poach your territory. There's nothing you can do. Your worthless manager will not stick up for you. He too is too scared to rock the boat.
9. As the title states, the company is toxic. People in IT have quit in the past because they were asked to spy on employees using the webcams. There was a fire-bombing of a manager's car, you can look it up on Google. There have been multiple lawsuits on harassment. Professionals of color encounter a non-supportive environment, and I'm being kind, that's not the phrasing they use. The CEO is a sneak, and actually enjoys firing people. He'll even play phone calls during sales meetings and ridicule the employee who made the call. Look at his rating here, everyone hates him. And they hate their managers. And they hate the performance metrics. And they hate the culture. And they hate their soul-crushing job of cold calling people who don't want to talk to CoStar. Yes, it is that toxic.
10. No remote work. Andy the CEO thinks the employees are untrustworthy, which explains the weird metrics.
11. To state the obvious, you will be micromanaged. Your performance will be ridiculed. Your manager will never stick up for his team. HR only exists to formally fire employees.
12. For your own mental health, do not join this company. A colleague had a mental breakdown and needed psychiatric help. As a result, CoStar had to keep him on payroll. My recommendation for current employees is to do the same. If the absurdity and demeaning nature of this boiler room robs you of dignity, self-respect, and peace of mind, go see a shrink and get disability while doing a job search.
