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
2.0
Jul 24, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Obviously the pros are that most people are motivated to serve the customers and the audience. Unfortunately, most of those people have left or were forced out, in the high double digits in the past six months. Crunchyroll is on life support, tech wise, but there are still some talented people repping the brand side. If you can work in marketing this is probably still an okay stepping stone, as long as you don't get invested. Total comp is average for the bay area.

Cons

Astroturfing reviews aside, this company has undoubtedly the worst-communicating leadership I've ever seen in my ~10 years in tech. Town halls have gone from being actual open discussions to one-way presentations, anonymous Q&A was nixed because they ran out of ways to dodge questions. ~20 talented engineers have left the company either because of reassignment, layoffs, or just plain incompetent management. There are almost no talented engineers left in San Francisco, leaving you to coordinate with a team based in Moldova. Management has broken promises over and over again that the SF team schedules would not be affected. Competency, creativity, and team velocities have taken a gigantic hit and although leadership is aware of the problem, they are attempting to wallpaper it over (perhaps in anticipation of a liquidity event) and just pushing problems further down the road rather than actually trying to fix them. Imagine all your tech stack, tech leads, and plain ol' production engineers are 6,000 miles away. Now realize that there's also a big time difference, non-native english difficulties, and the production problems that come when you're trying to build a new product. Now imagine reviewing code and not hearing back about changes or fixes until 12 hours later, and multiply this by everyday, and you have this huge tangled ball of problems, all because management saw engineers as replaceable robots. That is the reality at Ellation. It's not even the fault of the offshore engineers, but the offshoring process was NOT thought out, there was NO knowledge transfer from existing engineers, and almost all the talented engineers have left the company in the span of ~4 months. That is a really bad situation to walk into, which is why I'm writing this review in the first place. Just go in with your eyes open.

1.0
Jan 18, 2017

The harder they fall

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The best reason to work at Ellation is that it is at least three years ago and you are working at Crunchyroll instead.

Cons

Ellation does not value the experience or skills of its employees. The bumbling executives have been bamboozled by an uncharismatic grifter and let go of many of its most talented individuals in favor of incompetent outsourcers. What was once one of the best places to work in the Bay Area has been completely decimated: culture, job satisfaction and all.

avatar
Crunchyroll Response
9y
Thank you for taking the time to submit a review. We really appreciate your sharing your perspective. The important thing to note is that Ellation is still in the midst of many changes. We are working hard to try and stay ahead of the competition, and to continue to offer our employees and our fans a valued experience. As we pursue these critical goals, change is at the forefront of everything we do. We must continue to change and pivot our strategy so we can stay ahead in the game. We are in a period of high growth and we understand this is fast paced environment is not for everyone. Three years ago we were a leader in the industry and we were continuing to pioneer how content was received by fans. We took great pride in our mission. We were fostering deeply devoted passionate fans with a community that forged deep connections. We are not turning our backs on those fans now. Some of our decisions are not easy to make, but we feel confident that we are heading in the right path for continued success. We can only hope that those still with the company are here to pioneer greater changes in the industry. Help us in our pursuit by being the change you seek to see. Culture is greatly impacted through change, but culture can positively be impacted when everyone takes ownership and has the desire to see change happen in a positive way. We challenge you to be part of this exciting change.
1.0
Aug 15, 2019

This company is all sorts of screwed up

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Anime is cool. Benefits are nice, free catered food Mondays through Thursdays, some colleagues are very nice and genuine, but are few and far between. Honestly though, none of these pros are worth it.

Cons

Talent and skill are not awarded here; tenure is. You can easily tell the ones who have it great and love it here all have been at this company since the dawn of time. There’s no transparency at all for anyone that is not an executive or part of upper management, and many people are leaving whenever they get a chance. Some also just disappear overnight and are never talked about again. No one really knows why. My guess is that they’re downsizing drastically since that huge merger happened, and to avoid headlines and bad press, they’re blaming things on some of these employees and getting rid of them that way. Upper management and executives are ignorant about who is actually competent versus who is barely qualified to make coffee. Certain management have zero knowledge in their supposed realm of expertise, and base performance on how much you love anime or how good you are at pleasing your higher ups. Communication is non-existent. Worse, instead of working together, certain department heads encourage being difficult to other teams to prove a petty argument. Like really? Is this grade school? The worst part about this place is how downright malicious some people are. Some of these problem managers will give subordinates a hard time and disguise it as “training an employee.” But don’t expect HR to resolve anything; they “listen” and then dismiss issues altogether, so nothing ever improves. The only thing you can rely on HR for is weird seminars or activities that don’t resolve any real problems in the workplace, like finding out your “workplace personality.” Like... okay? Basically, if you love anime and want an honest work environment, do yourself a favor and avoid this place entirely; you’ll hate anime if you end up working here. Crunchyroll sounds like a great place to work (because who doesn’t love anime?), but in reality, it’s a crapshoot. It’s a terrible company full of immature bullies that will expect you to suck up to them cause they’ve been here longer than you. If you can’t do that, you’ll inevitably lose your job for not being a team player.

Viewing 4 - 6 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.