Family business - Engineer Spokeo Employee Review

1.0
8 Jun 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good "hourly" pay if you throw away your sense of ownership of caring about the business and considering that working load requires significantly less than 40 hours per week. You can comfortably work another full time job, still having good work life balance. People have commonly rated 3-5 days for a ticket that in another company would give consistently given 1 day. Not a bad thing if you want to chill and earn free money. Just don't do any extra work otherwise you'll be the black sheep in the herd. - Cool team bonding and company events - There are cool people here, but they don’t have any decision making power. - Good place to chill and work a side job or another full time and "retire". Not a great place to grow if you're not related to any of the founders. - Flexible working hours

Cons

- If you have an ownership mindset, you will hate your life here - Boring work with almost no distinguished job titles, you're pretty much all working on the same set of tickets that upper management decides is most important - People in power don't care product is bad. Just because SEO went down, less people can get scammed from the product and hence financials go down. Good products will get traffic regardless of SEO. There are competitors out there that do not charge a dime with more accurate information. Result is a 20% team downsize and slashed benefits. - Top down leadership with most of the true decision making power dependent on the CTO who has to sign off on literally everything, at least in terms of anything technical. 99% of the decision making power is based on family business as there are a lot of related relatives in the company from C suite perspective so they basically have immunity and are important stakeholders. - Highly political environment despite feeling that it is fairly casual. Since CTO has to sign off on everything, everyone else is just concerned about keeping him happy rather than improving the product. Leadership is low-key looking for slaves without being too direct. Aka sheep who just follow orders. - False sense of teamwork and closed minded leadership. Not forward-thinking. Stubborn. - Dystopian environment and culture.

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Spokeo Response
2y
We’re certainly proud of the fact that we provide strong pay and benefits and have a strong company culture, an aspect of which is bringing teammates together for fun, interesting events (either in-person or virtually, depending on each teammate’s location preference). Though there are times that specific work just has to get done, we also try to give engineers the opportunity to work on other projects that are suited to their skills, interests, and/or appetite for learning, while also striving to respect each person’s desired level of work-life balance. Teammate engagement is something we regularly seek feedback on (through surveys and other channels). Though there is always room for improvement, our survey results show that we have made significant strides in creating an environment that promotes and fosters teammate engagement (though engagement is a two-way street that requires teammates to be willing to engage). If you are a current employee, you know that listening with empathy is one of our core values. We encourage you to reach out confidentially to our HR Department if you feel uncomfortable speaking directly with the CTO. They are here to understand your concerns better and work with you to find ways to enhance your engagement and experience at Spokeo. We are committed to working together to create a positive and productive work environment for everyone.

Explore other reviews about Spokeo

5.0
10 Nov 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good company culture and good people to work with.

Cons

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1.0
26 Nov 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I worked on the email team a millennia ago, not sure if it still exists today. It was a fun job not answering calls. Very small biannual raises, maybe a quarter or two increase an hour. They reward seniority and tenure. Actually, it's one of the reasons why I left, couldn't stomach seeing some of the leadership day-in-day-out. One of the team leads couldn't contain his energy whenever he was provided attractive female customer service agents to supervise, tried to put on alpha-ish displays and wore small tight shirts. Kind of created a weird aggro morale for his team, even promoted several times up to executive office for some reason. BUT thankfully, my coworkers were awesome!! This was definitely a temporary job for someone in between careers, there were lots of unique personalities, lots of snacks, company events, so I'd say the morale team (yes one of those existed) did a pretty good job.

Cons

Whoops, just read the above

2
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Spokeo Response
6mo
Thank you for sharing your recollections; we are sincerely sorry that aspects of your experience, particularly around leadership conduct and growth opportunities, left a poor impression. Though much has changed since those early days, your account reminds us that culture is shaped not only by policies but by daily behavior. We’re glad the camaraderie and community you found among coworkers offered some balance, and we’ve since strengthened our leadership expectations, feedback channels, and development practices. We remain committed to fostering a workplace where respect and fairness are constant.
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