RealNetworks reviews

2.9

33% would recommend to a friend

(304 total reviews)
avatar

Rob Glaser

37% approve of CEO

18% positive business outlook

RealNetworks has an employee rating of 2.9 out of 5 stars, based on 304 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The RealNetworks employee rating is 25% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

304 reviews
1.0
Aug 30, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The location is good - The cafeteria is half-decent and the ambiance is nice - Generous vacation + sick leave package - Decent insurance options - Some very smart people at the engineering level and some very good groups to work for

Cons

- Pay ranges from poor to mediocre at the non-manager or non-lead level. - Incredibly poor management (although a lot of the inept executives have been let go, there are still a bunch of "ambitious", suck-up incompetent people at the Director level; these guys haven't shipped anything successful in years but keep moving around teams and destroying their teams in the process). - Way too many managers and way little management. Company seems bent on promoting people to managers and directors without any direct reports. What are they managing or directing? - A non-trivial number of people admit they are at Real because they can't find a job anywhere else. This coupled with the constant layoffs does wonders for employee morale. - Human Resources has plenty of people in the group but for all intents and purposes, most of them are pretty useless. The company has no growth chart or defined levels of any kind. HR only comes into the picture when there are layoffs.

2.0
Aug 28, 2010

A changing place

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

With the new CEO in place, RN is a company going through massive change. He has a lot of clean up to do, since the company really was in a terrible shape under its former leadership.

Cons

Massive lay offs every quarter for the last 2 years makes the place into a pretty hostile environment. Poor technology and poor management of technology in a tech company.

3.0
Aug 9, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

+ Work life balance was strongly encouraged + If you're used to working in a REALLY fast-paced environment, you can coast here + Great location + Grassroots influence is possible - just find colleagues that want to volunteer or make something happen at work, and you won't find much push-back + Attempts to have programs for high potential employees + Two bowling lanes in the HQ Seattle building available to employees

Cons

- Not very challenging - No sense of camaraderie and pride among coworkers - Feels like all the strong ones are jumping ship - Company's products for consumers are not pride-inducing

Viewing 211 - 213 of 304 Reviews

Glassdoor has 322 RealNetworks reviews submitted anonymously by RealNetworks employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if RealNetworks is right for you.