Crunchyroll reviews

3.4

57% would recommend to a friend

(239 total reviews)
avatar

Rahul Purini

53% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Crunchyroll has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 239 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Crunchyroll employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Arts, Entertainment & Recreation industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

239 reviews
1.0
Feb 16, 2017

Absolutely Not Recommended

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Fun and talented coworkers (but most of them have been fired or quit at this point) - Interesting products - Great fans

Cons

- Toxic work environment created and perpetuated by a very self-interested executive team - Lack of planning from management - Tech debt - Culture and identity as a company has deteriorated

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Crunchyroll Response
9y
There has been quite a bit of negative publicity recently due to changes that we have made at Ellation. Although we are not able to discuss all details of strategic decisions, as a result of these decisions, we were saddened to have to eliminate several roles in our San Francisco headquarters in order to better align our efforts to grow globally. We appreciate all the feedback and the time taken to capture the feedback by former employees who have been directly impacted by the changes. In times of change, morale can reflect the mood of the times. The leadership and PeopleOps truly care and are taking steps to address the feedback, to continue to strive to be as transparent as possible, and to continue to invest in growth initiatives. Those whose roles were eliminated were treated respectfully, and were offered a generous package and support to help them transition to better and brighter endeavors outside of Ellation.
1.0
Aug 20, 2025

Sony, please look into employee feedback about VPs + Senior Leadership

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- There are still some very passionate anime fans remaining at the company, although this number is quickly decreasing - Anime fandom has grown exponentially and has potential to keep expanding

Cons

- Strategy is constantly changing month to month without a cohesive vision. Every time quarterly plans are made they always change within the quarter due to last minute initiatives that should have been brought forth sooner but come in late due to poor management - Most of the work that gets prioritized comes in the form of “[insert VP or executive name here] wants this” vs actual data or metrics. The people executing the work don’t know if that’s actually something the leader in question said or if the requestor is being liberal with their interpretation of what they said and force others to execute to earn brownie points for themselves - Upward mobility is nonexistent for high performing ICs. The people who usually get ahead are the ones who spend more time engaging in workplace politics and fraternizing with leadership than doing their actual work, which then falls on ICs to fix issues caused by middle management - The Directors and VPs who are being hired from other streaming or traditional media companies don’t care to understand the nuances of the Japanese Anime industry and try to apply traditional Western media practices - Employee feedback is monitored and non-anonymous so people are afraid to speak out publicly, especially post layoffs. The only truly anonymous feedback is in the form of a yearly employee engagement survey submitted in May but the results yet to be presented in an all staff meeting, most likely because they keep trending downward and rating leadership poorly - Leadership claims to care about the fans but decided to remove popular fan features like comments on episodes. A year later fans are still asking for the return of the feature but no actions are being taken to bring them back - Pay is below market and has no stock options to offset the lower salary. Benefits are mediocre compared to other tech companies. Given the current company culture and leadership ignoring the feedback of actual anime fans at the company the pay + benefits are not worth the struggle now.

2.0
Feb 4, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work location. Strong product offering with runway. The other engineers I worked with day to day were very bright, and great colleagues.

Cons

In my case I was sold the idea the org had plenty of challenging problems to solve. The reality is the problems are simple, and shouldn't be so prevalent for a company of this size. The "challenge" is having to explain to management that releasing software is not a success. Achieving a measurable result is. However, in order to make a measurable change you must first actually measure something. The hiring manager for your role may change after you accept the offer without notice. Not only did this happen to me, I later found out this was common practice. Three people on my team had resigned within a month of each other; pointing to symptoms of systemic mismanagement. General lack of trust. No matter how small, be prepared for management to treat most instances where you need to push back as an argument rather than a discussion. This is a regular pain point because interactions with management are frequently about what, rather than why.

Viewing 49 - 51 of 239 Reviews

Glassdoor has 295 Crunchyroll reviews submitted anonymously by Crunchyroll employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Crunchyroll is right for you.