Getty Images reviews

3.4

52% would recommend to a friend

(662 total reviews)
avatar

Craig Peters

76% approve of CEO

35% positive business outlook

Getty Images has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 662 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Getty Images employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media & Communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

662 reviews
2.0
Oct 27, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice area Fremont, passable building.

Cons

So much to address but here are some of the low lights: Lack of Skill in Development: With the constant bug fixes, these are major fixes, mostly due to data corruption, one wonders if the code which is promoted to production is reviewed. The answer is no. Most the time code is reviewed on the basis of, "it looks okay". No actual functional testing. The reason for this lies in the fact most the developers lack the skill set to write enterprise level code. The previous is especially true on the Database side(Microsoft SQL Server). Most of database coding talent and experience resides on the operations side. Which make sense, as Operations has constantly bailed out developer mistakes every time. Lack of Core Infrastructure: If you are professional in Operations or Development and are expecting a Data Dictionary, an Entity Relationship Diagram or even a SCM which properly factored, you are out of luck. If you are looking a Disaster Recovery Plan, proper Hardware Resources for sustainability or even opportunity implement any aspects of the above, you are out of luck. Case in point, recently a major production database had been severely corrupted. Operations attempted to restore to a point of two days prior. However, upon examination of the tape backup it was found the same tape backup had failed and Manager of the Team responsible did not care nor did he feel the need to notify anyone. Next, there are several applications which require more disk drive room but rather than have money to do so, Management chooses to spend money on untested and poorly implemented applications. Lack of Planning: The company has adopted the model of pushing more features to market faster. However, there was no planning sessions on how to do this effectively. It appears someone in upper Management woke one day and said Getty needs to have super fast Time To Market. And each release to Production reflects this as there are atleast 20 patches deployed afterwards. And all suggestions from the sustainers, those in Operations, are ignored on purpose.

3.0
Oct 21, 2009

No choice but to stay where you are.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office location and environment were fantastic. Never had a feeling of corporate stuffiness. Manager became a dear friend. Very good benefits package.

Cons

Absolutely no room for career advancement or even ability to keep skills current. Too many key pieces of technology were centralized and moved to Seattle. At times my job functioned in name only. Constant changes in senior management lead to many bad technology decisions and I was gradually removed from those discussions. New management in IT desperately need to listen to the people who have been with the company longer than they. Too many help desk operators in other office were not properly trained on company IT standards due to MANAGERS not properly trained on company IT standards.

2.0
Oct 4, 2009

No dream job

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office is in a cool are in Fremont and it is a cool industry to work in. There are some talented people working there.

Cons

There is an underlying class system at work at Getty Images and/or a 'good ole boys club'. Where people get promoted because they are on good terms with people and not based on performance. Also, the rules only apply to certain people despite what corporate policy dictates. Middle Management does not listen to their engineers nor do they invite engineers to meetings regarding technical solutions that are to be purchased. This has cost the company a lot of money on shoddy products with sub-par support. As stated below, there is a director level which is unneeded and costs the company a lot of money in addition to slowing down progress due to them holding things up or making bad decisions. Decisions are made by the management that cost the company money without any regard for business function. For example, director level and up in the company get a Mac Laptop which is basically a status symbol. We do not have any business applications that use Macs so there is no reason to have them other than people trying to feel important. Support for the unneeded Macs cost the company lots of money without reason. Management expects projects and/or tasks to be completed without providing the tools/equipment to get the job done. This just leaves things in limbo where management feels they are no longer responsible and so an engineer can be thrown under the bus. In the same vein, many teams are understaffed yet expected to get the same work accomplished as when their team was fully staffed. Benefits/Bonuses have been cut (401K matching) and raises have been denied due to the "economy". Getty does not have enough money to pay for these things any longer that were promised when people were hired, but they do have enough to purchase other companies and purchase expensive applications which end up being bad decisions. There is no room for advancement at Getty in IT. In order to save money, Getty is jamming all of its staff on one less floor which effectively is getting rid of all average size cubicles to be replaced by open desks stuck together with little dividers.

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