Marketing = Fail - Marketing Morningstar Employee Review

2.0
Apr 12, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Morningstar is forward-looking. They select good tools and marketing technologies. New stuff about behavioral research is cool. People are pretty decent in marketing/design. I think overall it's pretty steady. Lots of companies have ebbs and flows. I think Morningstar is no different.

Cons

A year with a new CMO, and marketing is pretty bad right now. This place is a disorganized mess. They talk about 'big ideas' but don't really support the areas of the company that actually make the money, which makes no sense. It makes the businesses mad too. I've been here a few years, it's gotten way worse, pretty much marketing kindergarten hiding behind a respected brand. Lots of whining and infighting within marketing, super, super lame operational leadership. You can tell the marketing leaders don't understand the businesses they try to support. But pretend like they do. They try to act like they're at a startup. . Employees are kind of confused plus problems are handled with tons of passive aggression or straight-up ignored. Honestly it is uncomfortable sometimes.

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Morningstar Response
10y
Thank you for your feedback. I'm sorry you are encountering frustrations, I appreciate your perspective and will keep it in mind as we march forward. Big change can be hard. We are building a modern marketing organization in support of our forward-looking view and I'm proud of what the team has accomplished so far. As you astutely point out, you work with decent people and it’s a steady place. You can talk to those people about what you see going on - talk to your colleagues, your managers, to HR, to me. We are here to help you be successful and resolve the business problems you uncover. Our core values are steady too - “Great People: Every person here matters and contributes to our success”. I want you to be a part of that success so you can help Morningstar better serve investors. We are in this transformation together. Rob Pinkerton - CMO

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Pros

Really kind people work here, for the most part everyone I have worked with is smart and I have learned so much from them. There are great benefits: unlimited PTO, 6 week paid sabbatical is earned after 4 years of employment, 6 month maternity leave. Great location of an office. Great work life balance.

Cons

Not very competitive pay and it is easy to hit a ceiling in your career development. New HR policies are kind of strange, will not promote you unless you make enough money to be promoted which they designed the system to make it so you cannot go up. HR has also laid people off because they make too much money without considering the consequences of removing senior employees with unique/not stored intelligence vital to the company. They also hired a bunch of remote employees, then implemented a 4 day required in office rule no matter if you live states away from an office, which pushed hundreds of people to quit, not receive their bonus, and not require M* to pay them severance. It didn't use to be this way but the last year or so has been strange.

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