SiteMinder reviews

3.9

77% would recommend to a friend

(517 total reviews)
avatar

Sankar Narayan

86% approve of CEO

72% positive business outlook

SiteMinder has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 517 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The SiteMinder employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

517 reviews
1.0
Feb 14, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

SiteMinder is an interesting company that in theory could be quite good. They make software for people who don't know anything about software - so you'd think it'd be a design focused organisation. Where UX would be central to helping SMBs navigate complexity to laser in on the actual valuable parts of running their online or eCommerce presence. The reality is that SiteMinder has about 7 designers total. And the company is actually a large sweatshop where teams produce unintuitive and impossible to use interfaces. Interfaces that have to be supplemented with just about half the population of Manila. All those warm bodies act as the hamster wheel keeping the whole thing running. If you are a customer and you don't understand how to use the software.. don't worry, some poor sod in Manila will configure it for you. It doesn't take much logical deduction to tell that a "scale-up" with a non-scalable, warm body model like this is not going to scale or grow. Which is the great irony of SiteMinder. In theory it could be quite good - but theory is not reality and theory is where the pro's end.

Cons

SiteMinder is a company run by children pretending to be adults. The management dis-empower staff from decision making, keeping everyone in the dark like mushrooms. The result is a culture of fear, blame games and distrust. As a company it has the worst "clique" cultures I have ever experienced. You can come to the office and everyone (other than the lovely receptionist and IT guy) will literally blank face you and not reply to your small talk greetings. If you aren't in the in crowd of certain teams, well you may as well not exist. Which is frankly an awful culture and no wonder that staff generally want to avoid their office at all costs. In terms of office - it's large and modern and highly inconvenient for anyone who isn't a multi-millionaire. Your commute will be excessive because it's 25 minutes walk from the nearest train station. But management don't care as they all sit pretty in their mansions that are within driving distance. The company is one of rampant gaslighting and is quite toxic. Their current stick to beat staff is that remote and hybrid working has made staff lazy. So you better come into the office so we can monitor you (where you can enjoy the toxic and hostile culture!) A problem best articulated by the company's 5 focus areas - the last of which being about staff. Which sums up the problem nicely, at SiteMinder the staff, yes you reading this, are last. The real problem is not individual contributors or the effort of staff. The real problem is management and hangovers from it's start up days. The CEO is a dingbat who is distracted by the newest shiny toy. There is no company vision or strategy. Everything is just floating in the wind, going from shiny "growth" idea to the next shiny "growth" idea. The man couldn't articulate a company strategy even if he asked ChatGPT and got one made up for him. The senior leaders have limited experience in actually leading. Many of them have "grown" with the company from start-up days - i.e. they have been promoted, but they lack the experience, training and personal attributes to actually lead. The result is overbearing control freaks who put their own interest ahead of collaboratively working with their teams and the teams around them. There are also more "Chiefs" than there are on the bloody Chiefs rugby team (Hamilton, NZ ;)). This leads to many small portfolios of competing priorities that fight over the limited headcount and resources that are left over from the huge sweatshop of headcount in Manila. Each of these 10 or 11 Chiefs then fight as feudal lords for their own priorities. The winners are always Sales and the former CFO (now Operations Chief). All of which leads to a dysfunctional company where the staff are last, the software is second last and flogging crap via a humongous boots on the ground sales team is first. Ultimately if you can thrive in a dysfunction like this, or are a malignant sociopath then SiteMinder may be for you.

avatar
SiteMinder Response
3y
To say we are disappointed to read this review is an understatement. Your comments are not only derogatory, they are unsubstantiated and disrespectful to the rest of team members at SiteMinder who regularly provide confidential feedback in a constructive manner. It sounds like you may have been impacted by the recent redundancy program which is very unfortunate. Similar to the vast majority of other tech organisations, we made the difficult decision to commence a cost reduction program, which sadly involved some redundancies across the business. We would like to take this opportunity to respond to a couple of areas you have misrepresented: Our People Our values are #wecometogether, #wegrow, #wemakeitsimple and #wehustle and so for anyone else reading this review, please know that we wholeheartedly believe that everyone counts, and ensure that our employees across the globe are treated fairly, respectfully and have the opportunity to grow personally and professionally at SiteMinder. This is reflected in our engagement scores, employee net promoter scores and employee retention which are well above industry benchmarks. Our Award Winning Products We put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and relish feedback to make what we do simple and brilliant. Having recently won eight major awards at the 2023 HotelTechAwards, including the customers choice award, our customers agree! Communication and Strategy Transparency and communication is something we pride ourselves on at SiteMinder. We operate a number of forums which enable employees to stay up to date with our strategic priorities, business results, and progress on key initiatives including monthly All Hands with an anonymous Q&A with our CEO, skip level meetings, monthly business reviews, product roadmaps etc. It’s great to see that you have been part of these forums and are aware of the five priorities, one of which is employee engagement. You do however seem to have misunderstood that all priorities have equal weighting and importance. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you further, please reach out your HRBP, or to me directly on dionne.woo@siteminder.com. We wish you all the best for your future success and sincerely hope you find an employer that suits you and your work style better.
1.0
Sep 12, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Free alcohol every Friday (which is deeply needed after what you experience every week there) - Super nice cleaning lady! - Great coffee Shop downstairs, which you of course have to pay for as its a normal business, but you enjoy this escape the best you can, excellent service!

Cons

There are no words, to describe how I feel, but maybe the following are as close as it gets to my experiences and the ones of ex-co-workers. If you like to be harassed (sexually or mentally), systematically bullied, stabbed in the back by people who work in HR and management, and get promised a salary, which you won't get paid, as the commission structure is a big lie, if you don't have enough negativity in your life to make you wanna give up on life, ...then this is the perfect place for you, you've always been looking for! Seriously, it's one of those typical "if I could give 0 stars, I would" type of reviews. I basically don't want anyone to go through the pain and misery, that I went through, so I hope you take the few minutes to read this review, you will thank me that this might have prevented you from making a huge mistake in your life, like I did. At least I learned from it and try to share my wisdom with you. I could dive deep into what went wrong in which department, but I won't, as I don't want to write a novel, because you could certainly fill a whole book with it. In the end, it comes down to a kinder-garden, where every second kid has a sharp knife. I've worked in a few places, also for less salary, but never came across such a hell before. It feels like I aged years in those few miserable months. First thing I associate with this company now in retrospect is a big big mark of incompetence. At times, I was jealous of the cleaning lady and wished I could have switched jobs with her. She was the only happy person I have seen in the office, who never was depressed, I think she would do a lovely job in running this office. Working at Siteminder, I basically felt like a modern slave. Treated like a useless product no one cares about. If you were to see a documentary on the news, you wouldn't believe it, but this is exactly what Glassdoor is for, to show you how ruthless and toxic of an environment this office is. False promises are made right from the get go. After a few weeks, you notice, what massive mistake you have made, applying here. People around you know this, but do their best not to drag you down to early, to the level of reality. Once you realized it though, there is no going back. People have been afraid to go into 1-2-1s with their manager, afraid of higher management from other countries visiting the office, as you never knew what to expect today. The Sales team was pushed every day to reach unrealistic targets, as the management lost, or never had, a good grip to reality. Its like selling unicycles in a shopping center full of Ferraris, for 10 times the price of a Ferrari of course, so that doesn't help. Not only is the product absolute average, (unless when it comes to pricing, where its way above average) you are also pushed every morning how you want to reach your numbers - which is something, that reminded me of 6th grade to see if all the kids did their homework, just the other way around. What do you expect Siteminder? I call and call like I do everyday. How many meetings do I plan for the day? Hmm...maybe the 2 that are in my calendar, which you have access to? What a joke. Also, you are pressured for no reason, to make more calls, without having proper accounts, or tools, or phones... basic stuff which is simply missing. I've never seen a callcenter where the essential tools where not working, which resulted in not being able to understand the other person on the line, or it dropped in the middle of a call, or sometimes nothing worked and if you were not hitting your call target, then it's of course your fault only. Improvement suggestions were made, change was promised, but never happened. Empty promises, must have been one of the core values I missed during the Onboarding.... ..Oh yeah. Training.... To sum it up, there is none. Learning by doing. You get a basic introduction to the company and "values" but nothing that really helps you to do your job. We always got promised training and it took months to implement the most basic training. If the sales people would take that long to bring a deal in, they would get fired. Week management, hires week people and this will eventually lead to the downfall of the office and/or whole company. I really hope not all people world wide have to suffer as bad as we did in our office, as I can just speak for my office of course and send thoughts and prayers to the others. So...Cons summed up? Well... - All kinds of harassment and bullying by Management.... -.... which seems to be tolerated by HR, as no legitimate support was given when raising claims like this and it felt more like they wanted to protect the perpetrator and themselves than the victims of those actions. - No proper tools to work with. Which brings me to.... - ...Lack of professionalism - Pure as that. I met talented people here who realized very fast that they were wasting their time here - Lack of knowledge in management how to treat people - Depressing place to work! I seriously fell into a deep depression up to a point, where I couldn't even find the energy to leave my bed to go to work. -> If there was a worst place to work award, Siteminder certainly deserves it. Siteminder has done damage to the mental health of so many people in this office, a mark that you can't undo that easily. PLEASE people, stay far far away from this company. If you seek a new job, do anything, but don't apply at Siteminder. Do not fall a victim to this like me and many others did, who all left the company by now. If you are desperate for a job, there are other options in this city and certainly in the country.

1.0
Feb 2, 2023

Huge changes needed

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent location in Millers Point, with modern facilities, free snacks, weekly social drinks. Very casual non-corporate environment. Pretty seamless recruitment and interview process for external candidates; the TA team communicates well through the process and provides exceptional guidance. Staff onboarding process is also well structured and self-paced to allow you to understand the product suite, ways of working and key stakeholders. Hybrid working environment is the norm; flexible working hours in my division which encouraged a good work/life balance. There’s a good atmosphere and collaboration within specific teams. Diversity and Inclusion is really strong here and there Pride ERG group is highly visible and active - it’s good to see the model is being replicated for Women and POC employees and allies.

Cons

Despite what SiteMinder does well, there are so many opportunities it has to address. It is a 15yo publicly listed company but it doesn’t act like one. There are a ton of hangovers from its start-up days and unless there is major change across its leadership, culture, strategy, tech, etc then its challenges are only going to get worse. SiteMinder’s best talent will eventually tire of being in the hamster wheel and they will abandon in droves. C-level and VP leadership is largely stuck in its ways and generally resistant to any new ideas on how to improve products or customer experience that would allow for efficiency, scale and reduced friction. The CEO is largely distracted by quick-fix growth Sales pathways but the post-Sales customer journey could be so much better. There’s a desperation to report ‘green’ results when the reality is far different - processes are incredibly inefficient and performance is measured on volume metrics rather than qualitative outcomes. Much of the tenured middle management has been promoted not on the basis of their talent, but because of their product knowledge (little of which has been documented anywhere accessible or understandable). As a result they are underdeveloped as people leaders and out of their depth, and given little growth and support. Division heads run their departments like cottage industries and will protect their patch at all costs. Silos abound, gossip and gaslighting is rampant, and any constructive criticism is generally weaponised against those who seek to drive change - dissenting voices are openly bullied. I personally found the culture absolutely toxic. My mental health completely deteriorated and I wanted to leave within a year of joining - which should highlight the systemic problems in the company’s culture and upper leadership. There’s a ton of smaller, quick-win opportunities too. Different teams run on different performance appraisal models and pay review cycles. The internal platforms are a multitude and a mess - as one example there were seven (!) HR systems alone, each used for a different thing. We shifted performance review platforms three times in under 12 months with zero consultation. I had unnecessary battles to get approval to backfill and then appoint talent into my team. Then I had to wage a further battle to get the newcomers paid a remotely appropriate salary (well below market rate, I will add) because of the “optics” this would create for their former peers who didn’t apply for these promotions. Everything I have listed is fixable but there’s little will right now to acknowledge the systemic opportunities and make lasting structural change. The plane will continue to be built as they fly it, and patched with band-aids, chewing gum and blind luck. The shame is that there some brilliant people working there. I had a wonderful immediate manager and crew; being able to lead and develop my directs autonomously was a privilege. It’s such a shame the rest of it was so broken. In the end I was made redundant before I could resign - and it was such a relief.

avatar
SiteMinder Response
3y
Thank you for sharing your experience, we appreciate your candid feedback. I’d like to acknowledge that redundancy can be unsettling and difficult for employees. Our EAP services are still available to you, and our TA team can provide career support, please reach out to me directly if you would like to access these services. You are right that there is lots of opportunity at SiteMinder, we've been growing rapidly which makes it a very fast paced environment that doesn't suit everyone. Generally, our employee turnover is low, our eNPS and employee engagement is high and there is a real sense that people love working here. We are sorry that you didn’t have this experience with us and wish you all the best for your future success.
Viewing 106 - 108 of 517 Reviews

Glassdoor has 581 SiteMinder reviews submitted anonymously by SiteMinder employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if SiteMinder is right for you.