Comscore Sr. Software Engineer reviews

3.6

99% would recommend to a friend

(11 total reviews)
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Jon Carpenter

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Reviews by job title

11 reviews
2.0
Jan 12, 2017

Uneven

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

[This review is coming from a former Rentrak employee, working out of Portland.] - There are interesting problems to solve, in a variety of areas. No shortage of work to be done. - Smart, engaged co-workers

Cons

- There are high-level directives from top executives but daily tasks seem unfocussed. There doesn't appear to be clear direction from mid-level management. - An aging technology stack is kept working with minimal investment in upkeep. Scattered efforts to improve or replace our stack have failed to coalesce into real change. Bugs can exist for years without efforts to squash. - Many of the best engineers from Rentrak have left since the buyout. - Upper management seems to have a severe case of ADD, distracted by the latest flashy thing. They don't seem involved in the day-to-day work. - 401k match and benefits are pretty weak for the industry and location.

1.0
May 13, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free soda, coffee, tea, candy, and peanut butter sandwiches, if you like that sort of thing. Clean office. Nice location downtown near lots of great food options, especially if you like mediterranean food. Pay is decent, slightly above local market rate for senior people.

Cons

This is the only place I've ever worked that actually made me want to stop being alive. I worked in the Portland office, which was acquired by comScore when they bought Rentrak. The place was a mushroom farm with a pretty bad/depressing atmosphere to begin with. The company had low morale from years of poor management and was basically a palace of frowns, and an annoyingly meeting-heavy culture did not help. It was also the least diverse place I've ever worked. Almost entirely mopey white guys. The comScore acquisition made everything much worse. Some of the perks went away, many of the resources needed to do our jobs became very scarce (cloud servers, etc), they made all of the Linux-using engineers switch to OSX and Windows, had a pretty oppressive "we own all your thoughts" employment agreement, and many engineers left because of it, myself included. All of this might have been something worth putting up with if the company was putting Humans on Mars or curing cancer, but at the core of it, comScore is a spyware company. Their business model is based on making it easier to deliver more targeted ads to people and maximize the revenue from those ads. So, every day you go to this mushroom farm where you're doing nothing to make anyone happy or improve the world with barrier after barrier is set up in front of you, and it chips away at you little by little until there's nothing left. Now that I don't work there, I'm not sad anymore. Please do not work at comScore. It will crush your soul. Heed this warning, it may just save your life.

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Comscore Response
10y
Thanks for your candid and colorful review. We'd think that most employees here don't share your sentiment. We're not sure how long you stayed after the merger with Rentrak, but obviously there are certain changes that occur when two companies of any significant size come together. We're doing all we can to make these changes positive for the employees and to address concerns as they come up. Regarding the business we're in, you'll want to take another look at the vast number of industry certifications and accreditations we've been awarded (some being as recent as this year), by the MRC and others that oversee this industry. We think that speaks volumes for the ethical nature of our business. As far as the 'ownership of thoughts', we assume you are referring to the standard employee NDA agreement. You'll likely find that this is standard practice for a number of mature organizations, and that it is in place to protect the business. However, we would in no way classify this as ownership of anyone's thoughts. We wish you well in your future roles, and appreciate the time you spent here at Rentrak/comScore.
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