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      Spokeo

      Engaged Employer

      Spokeo reviews

      3.5

      61% would recommend to a friend

      (168 total reviews)
      avatar

      Harrison Tang

      72% approve of CEO

      52% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.0

      Compensation and benefits

      3.9

      Diversity & inclusion

      3.9

      Work/Life balance

      3.7

      Culture & values

      3.3

      Senior management

      3.3

      Career opportunities

      Spokeo has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 168 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Spokeo employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      168 reviews
      1.0
      Sep 26, 2018

      Working here is bad for you in every way

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Praising Spokeo is like complimenting the deck chair arrangement on the Titanic.

      Cons

      It is not uncommon for Spokeo to “lose” an entire department in a day. Or they will slowly cut down department members one by one until there’s no one left. You could be in the middle of managing a project, only to find that the entire team responsible for building it has been fired or all quit. Then management will wonder what value you bring to the organization, since there’s nothing left for you to work on. So you’ll get punted around for a bit, working on projects that are nowhere near your area of expertise, then you’ll get fired too. For fun in your interview ask how long that person has been in their role. Unless they’re a VP or C-level, or an asian man, you can bet they’ve been there less than a year. I agree with other reviews here, I had never witnessed such overt sexism prior in my career to what I encountered at Spokeo. A woman can be an expert in her field and share her thoughts on a direction and literally the nearest man who has no background in that area can blindly disagree with her (and be wrong) and Spokeo will stand behind the man and often terminate the woman for “not knowing what she’s talking about.” Saw this happen a lot. There isn’t a real polite way to say this, but the C-Suite cannot or will not make good decisions. They consistently make willfully bad choices that no one else in the entire organization can understand. They’ve poured money into stupid ventures with literally no way to become viable or solvent (they spent millions building a website that isn’t even designed to accept payments). They’ve terminated team members on the actual day of team-building exercises meant to boost that team’s flagging morale following excessive turnover. They refuse to listen to internal or external experts in regards to product development, customer service, performance, marketing, or improvements to ensure long-term organizational viability. They can be presented with concrete data proving something isn’t working or is getting worse and they will disregard it and double-down on the bad direction. They can be presented with a well-researched competitive analysis that begs for a change in direction in product development, and they’ll just scoff and say the other company just doesn't have Spokeo's brilliance. Their competitors are growing much faster than they are, and have much better data quality. It feels hard to believe that Spokeo can actually stay in business for much longer. It’s fishy that they still are. They are willfully horrendous business managers and generally bad people. If you have any options at all, do not work here. It’s a negative mark on your record. This is a highly unethical company with no intention of changing. They lie to their customers, and they will lie to you. They get taken to court a lot. And to make themselves feel better about all this, they will gaslight you that you were never had any value, and weren’t knowledgeable in your area (even if you can quantifiably prove otherwise), and that people like you are the reason this company is failing. Do not work here if you can at all avoid it.

      avatar
      Spokeo Response
      7y
      Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. We are sorry to hear that your experience was so different from the principles on which the company was founded and the standards to which the Spokeo team strives to adhere today. The marketplace does move at a rapid pace. Spokeo does execute its business plans rapidly but makes decisions about team members in a deliberate and thoughtful manner. Spokeo’s success and recognition in the industry is a direct product of the talented people who have joined it over the years to do the best work yet of their careers. Spokeo is committed to equal employment opportunity and expressly prohibits any unlawful discrimination or harassment based on gender, among other characteristics. With respect to witnessing any element of sexism, we have constantly encouraged anyone to take any such concern to one’s manager or Spokeo’s HR team member as outlined in Spokeo’s employee handbook. Our 200 or so fellow staff members come from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and run various programs, teams, and organizational functions. Everyone is included and accessible here at Spokeo, from the open-office floor plan to stand-up meetings, to monthly company-wide meetings, and to giving anonymous feedback via TinyPulse surveys. A recent internal TinyPulse question, How satisfied are you with the level of communication you are getting from the company? yielded a score of 8.3 compared to the industry average of 7.7. Spokeo continues to lean in with the refinement of our company values, improving the onboarding experience and delivering people-management training.
      1.0
      Sep 20, 2018

      Join a sinking ship!

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Pros? - Yes, there is free snacks (but its all junk food) - Yes, there is catered lunches, but due to budget its also very unhealthy. - Yes, there is a foosball and ping pong table (just don’t spend “too much” time using them). - Yes, there are team outings and forced fun such as hack-a-thons, games and annual Christmas parties, etc. Real Pros? - The pay. They pay VERY WELL because its so hard to keep talent. - The culture team. God bless them, they do an incredible job of trying to make the best of an incredibly bleak situation. - People. There are some incredibly smart and talented people that have ended up here, unfortunately they are the ones who do not get acknowledged or respected.

      Cons

      Up until this point in my career I had never experienced any hint of nepotism or sexism…so I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that not only is it a real issue at this company, its a HUGE problem that runs RAMPANT. At the end of the day this is a family run business. The managers are married to people in the c-suite, c-suite's best friends run departments, there are friends, cousins, siblings and more, and they will ALL be prioritized over you. As much as it pains me to say it, the sexism affects everything, be prepared to have people with many years less experience manage you, for bizarre requests that go against best practices to pop up, for your education and experience to be questioned daily, for you to be relentlessly micromanaged, and lastly for your presence to barely be acknowledged and your work discounted and ignored. On top of everything, the technology is not proprietary, is not innovative, is not accurate and the space is extremely competitive. People search is a dying industry and the numbers month-over-month prove it. With all the concerns around privacy I can not imagine this industry surviving the next 5 years. For a company that has been around for over 10+ years there is a general cluelessness that is truly mind boggling. From the basics of running a business, to common curtesy and professionalism, to best practices in ANY department, to interpreting analytics and data, to how customers are respected and treated. The way this company treats its customers is shameful. A company who admits their best customers are the "ones who forget they have the membership" or "pass away and we are able to charge their cards for a couple more months" In short, RUN... Run like there is a herd of elephants, with a 50ft avalanche on their heels, and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius right behind that...AWAY from this place.

      avatar
      Spokeo Response
      7y
      We are sorry to hear that your experience at Spokeo was not consistent with the principles on which the company was founded and the standards we strive to uphold today. We do not tolerate sexism, racism, or any form of unlawful discrimination. With respect to witnessing any element of sexism, we have constantly encouraged anyone to take any such concern to one’s manager or Spokeo’s HR team member as outlined in Spokeo’s employee handbook. Tolerance and comradery are pillars of the culture at Spokeo. Our 200 or so fellow staff members come from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and run various programs, teams, and organizational functions. Everyone is included and works together here at Spokeo. We couldn’t have accomplished our success and recognition in the industry without the contributions of the talented people who have joined Spokeo over the years. 8% of searches online are about people’s names, and the industry generates billions of dollars of revenue a year. To continue to lead in this huge market, we have to move at a fast pace, including keeping up with legal changes, and be focused on customer satisfaction. We continue to invest millions of dollars per year in evolving and improving our product features to provide our customers with a service that uses data to make the world around them more transparent. At the end, we feel our hundreds of thousands of subscribers and tens of millions of users deserve nothing less.
      1.0
      Apr 17, 2020

      A Lesson Not Worth Learning

      Anonymous employee
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Some genuinely awesome and talented people work here. The benefits and perks are above industry standard. The equipment provided is top-of-the-line.

      Cons

      Spokeo’s management team continues to act as its own worst enemy. From hire to exit, you’ll be amazed watching this team repeat the same cycle of mistakes. Eventually you’ll be caught in the crosshairs. You’ll think you’re safe... until you’re not. Accountability - there is none. Many of the leaders at Spokeo refuse to look within for the answers to their problems. Most employees walk on eggshells and avoid conflict by blindly agreeing to ridiculous proposals. You might try to fight it at first - they hired you for your decades of experience, right? You’ll quickly find out that a few HBR articles and a 2013 blog post from your-area-of-expertise.net make your leadership team more equipped to do your job than you are. The corporate brand is entirely disconnected from reality. The company that obscures its pricing/subscription model to sell private data to vulnerable customers can’t genuinely think it should be viewed as a champion of transparency. This absurdity has a real impact on the people responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company. I feel for the customer care team - no amount of free lunch makes up for being berated all day. I guess paying for premium ad placement of why Spokeo is a great place to work is cheaper than fixing the actual systemic problems. When things go from sour to toxic, senior managers have the luxury of being let go. The rest of us get to enjoy public humiliation, character assassination, and gaslighting while being moved deep into obscurity in an attempt to force a voluntary departure. You get bonus pain points if you’re a woman or person of color. Finding a new job is painful with Spokeo on your resume - prepare to articulate how you sold your soul and still have nothing of value to add to your portfolio.

      avatar
      Spokeo Response
      5y
      Thank you for your years of service. We are sorry to hear about your experience at Spokeo, but we are glad that you took the time to provide your valuable feedback. We hope you shared your thoughts directly with your manager when you were at Spokeo since it would be difficult for us to address your concerns if we weren’t aware of them. “Listen With Empathy” is the first of our six core values, and it is part of our culture to constantly seek our teammates’ feedback so that we can continuously improve. We host a weekly “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) with our CEO, send monthly anonymous employee surveys on various topics, and have a dedicated Culture team whose job it is to help improve team engagement. We advocate for an environment where every team member has the opportunity to voice their opinions and contribute to a variety of projects because. We are proud of the progress we’ve made toward building the most transparent data company for both our customers and teammates. We provide our customers with actionable insights about the people around them at low and clear prices. We equip teammates with information and contextual knowledge to further collaboration and engagement. As an example, we share all financial numbers, user and product analytics, and customer care metrics in our monthly company meetings. This monthly company meeting also includes an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session where teammates can pose anonymous questions to our leadership team. We believe that transparency makes our world a better place, and we will continue to listen and improve so that we can fulfill our mission.
      Viewing 4 - 6 of 168 Reviews
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      ReviewsSpokeo reviews

      Glassdoor has 178 Spokeo reviews submitted anonymously by Spokeo employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Spokeo is right for you.