CoStar Group reviews

Where to even begin… 1. Leadership without backbone. Management appeared more interested in pleasing executives than actually leading and guiding staff, which left employees without any real direction or clarity. 2. Chaotic operations. Assignments were often sent out late Friday nights, with the assumption that staff would work weekends. Pushing back on giving up any personal time usually led to being labeled as “inefficient" and "high-maintenance." Mind you, employees talk to each other, and not 1 photographer has said that they work less than 50-60 hrs a week. 3. Unsustainable workloads. Employees were regularly tasked with scouting, photographing, filming, editing, curating, uploading, and captioning 50+ parks and schools per week at the beginning of 2024. This metric was described as the “minimum safe metric.” Tasks and assignments eventually changed, but every new assignment had less value attached to it, adding more work and effort on the photographer's side to reach any metrics. Unfortunately, any employees ended up using PTO days just to catch up on editing. 4. Swarm phases. At a moment’s notice, photographers were required to travel to remote markets for 4–5 days straight, cramming in two weeks’ worth of assignments during that stretch. Travel was often encouraged over weekends to capture “authentic life” in public spaces, with zero consideration for personal time. Once back, employees were still expected to edit, upload, caption, and curate tens of thousands of images and videos in just five days. Travel was never listed or mentioned in the initial job description or interviews, and despite lots of push by photographers, they slyly made it a mandatory occurrence regardless of whether you couldn't travel due to personal differences and decisions. 5. Field work with little support. Staff were expected to complete assignments in extreme weather, deal with reshoots caused by shifting priorities, last-minute scrambles, and make sure they find work and organize it in a way that can help them reach their metrics, all while being efficient in the field. Photographers have had to handle everything alone when confronted with security issues, police stops, harassment, or hostile environments. It always felt like “this is your problem, not Costars, but here's the company's security management phone number if you need it." 6. Misleading job expectations. Roles were advertised as creative and fulfilling, but quickly turned into high-volume, low-quality production work that bore no resemblance to the original job description or responsibilities. 7. No expense coverage. Despite being on the road daily, field employees received no stipends for food, coffee or basic travel expenses outside of what the costar car provided. 8. Training out of touch. The focus was on software and creative “standards” rather than the reality of hitting impossible quotas under constant field issues and ever-changing assignment deliverables. 9. Moving targets. Priorities shifted daily, making planning nearly impossible and leaving employees scrambling to keep up with inconsistent demands. 10. Company-wide routine layoffs. After the homes.com launch, job cuts became a regular occurrence. Many employees realized they had been brought on simply to push the company past that milestone and were made to feel disposable by design. And the culture at the top has been made clear by Senior VP and Global Operations, Lisa Ruggles, who mentioned the employees' struggles during a company-wide meeting and responded: “Suck it up, buttercup, this is the job, what did you expect?” If you’re considering this company, be aware: the reality is extremely long hours, unstable and unexpected priority shifts, and a revolving door of completely burned-out employees.