Pros
IXL makes an excellent product and there is ongoing attention to product improvement and detail. There is a lot of pride in product and creating something that is valuable and will impact teachers and students. The individual employees at IXL are positive, hard working and collaborative. They are intelligent people who are enthusiastic and excited about their jobs.
Cons
There is little regard for employees who don't work in engineering or product development. Professional development is non existent and not supported. Decisions are made by the COO with little to no input from others, seemingly at random, with little thought given to the process or the ultimate impact. Micromanagement is taken to an extreme level. Every purchase, hire and decision must be approved by the COO who clearly does not trust her employees to make smart decisions. Both the CEO and COO are completely out of touch with the world of education. They created an excellent product but they have no idea how it truly impacts students nor what it looks like in the classroom. The company has a wealth of employees who do know what happens in classrooms but this is not valued nor are those employees listened to. Hiring and layoff decisions are made arbitrarily and without clear reasoning. In sales meetings, impressive quarterly growth is frequently touted as a testament to the hard work of the sales and customer success teams and the next week, 4-5 salespeople are laid off, only to be quickly replaced by new hires who sometimes only stay 2 weeks.