Groupon

I met and worked with some great people while at Groupon. I also had some amazing travel and cross team experiences are difficult to quantify given the rating parameters. When I had a sick family member, my team and manager were extremely understanding and flexible with my schedule.
But, and there is a but, I know that I was paid less than several colleagues who had fewer responsibilities and less years work experience. Also, despite playing critical roles in large projects I was never given the opportunity to manage a team or promoted to different roles.
Ultimately I left the company due to pay and the lack of career advancement.

Let me begin by saying that I do believe the majority of folks working for Groupon are trying to create a supportive culture, and would not intentionally set out to do the opposite. It is generally a good company for young professionals to start out, and there are many potential opportunities there. It’s a casual, colorful, social workplace, and you’ll meet a variety of personalities. That said, I have experienced and heard of the experiences of others in which leadership, co-workers, and teams fell far short of being supportive and inclusive. The company has changed and grown a lot in a few short years, and I hope that under the current leadership, with the recent change in “core values” that seems to be a great step in the right direction, Groupon will continue to progress in this area. I have a cautious confidence that many of the things I experienced and heard of were functions of a time when the company was structured differently, and I think (at least I hope) that many of my prior experiences would not have the opportunity to play out today.

I want to echo what others have said here in that individual experiences largely depend on the management of your team. I was previously on a team that was structured poorly and managed badly- in that case, upper management did not take decisive action soon enough and great people, opportunities, and ideas were lost. I’ve also been on a fantastic, highly functional team with great leaders- your potential for job satisfaction and general well-being, as well as your ability to take advantage of company benefits and potential opportunities within the company, will depend on your team culture and whether your team has an ally and advocate in its leadership. If you find yourself on a very toxic team, unless you were hired on at the kind of salary that would make such nonsense worth dealing with (unlikely, since the company generally hires all but upper leadership very young, at salaries below market rate) my personal recommendation would be to look around elsewhere. It is too easy for a current manager to hamper an employee’s internal application, though it’s certainly not impossible to move on within the company- just know that most people who do this, do so with the blessing of a supportive manager. Also worth mentioning that though the Chicago office is very large, it’s also very fluid, and if you’ve had a category 6 bad experience, you’ll find it nearly impossible to avoid running into someone you don’t want to see again.

Incremental yearly pay raises are fairly insufficient given the starting salary in most departments, and I’ve heard of instances of people making significant internal moves with no pay increase, which tells me the company isn’t willing to invest in cultivating some of the talent within its own walls. Most of the lateral moves I’ve heard of have been in the creative department, naturally. I’ve also known of plenty of well-compensated internal moves, mostly men moving into management positions in operations, which I’m sure the company views as being far more lucrative in terms of their bottom line than creative work. I firmly disagree, as I think the written and visual content on the site contribute just as much to profits via site sales, and employees moving into roles in that department should be compensated no differently from someone in corresponding operations or sales positions. I would not personally accept an offer with no pay increase like those I’ve heard of, but I believe that many people get attached to their teams and the social experience/atmosphere on the job, or they believe that they wouldn’t be able to find a job that would give them the responsibilities they’ve been entrusted with outside of Groupon with their level of experience- the trouble is, they’re no longer having a productive, sustaining experience in their position. Groupon can be great, but if you feel yourself languishing, or it looks like a dead end, or if you feel complacency starting to seep in, it’s probably time to look outside of this company. There are some great long-term career paths at Groupon, but the fact is there just aren’t that many, so (especially as a woman) if you’re not moving forward, learn what you can there and move on before the experience becomes a burden.

Many of the employees at Groupon are on the young and immature side, at least in the Chicago office, and I’ve found it much more enjoyable to be on a smaller, more focused team in terms of working productively with different personalities. In my experience, larger groups have felt a bit like High School, and it has been difficult to avoid people who’ve fallen into office pitfalls like gossip and distracting amounts of on-the-job socialization (for this and other reasons, I would also list the open-office environment as a negative due to decreased productivity, but that might just be me- managers are generally open to letting employees hack their desk space to fit their needs. I’ve seen lots of standing desks and colorful makeshift partitions put up to alleviate the open office hubbub).

I feel I must also mention that there is a noticeable lack of women in upper leadership positions at the company in general, as well as a very visible lack of women over the age of 35, which bothers me. The median age of female employees in the Chicago office is probably in the 25-30 range, and while the median age for men may be around the same overall (since the company hires very young for its sales and customer service teams) I see many older men aged 45+ in comparison to almost no women of this age, which I find very problematic. I can’t speak to the full tech department make-up since I don’t work there, though I do sometimes come in tangential contact with several women in engineering middle-management who are consistently working on major projects.

My background: I was an engineer in Palo Alto office.
1. I didn’t know other co-worker’s pay in Groupon, so I could not give any comment. However, comparing with Bay area market, Groupon’s pay was not the best but not the worst either – 3 stars
2. Groupon had an engineering ladder for promotion. It was not hard to get promoted, but it was not 100% based on individual performance – depends on your boss and your team – 3 stars
3. Startup culture, you have to social in order to get your job done. For many female employees, this is not easy. – 2 stars
4. Only 5 stars, you can bring kids and/or pets. No upper limit for PTO, and many activities.

My experience as a female in technology was not favorable. I out experienced my management which was perfectable acceptable but my management was not open to hearing any suggestions based on my experience. I was a woman that should sit in the corner and speak when I am spoken to.
Outside of technology this was not the case at all, but within IT there was no room for a woman with opinions and ideas.

My time at Groupon wasn’t the best, I had a 25 year old boss which would be fine if he was arrogant and knew a thing or 2 about real life. I felt that it was a frat like, party culture and I wasn’t respected or treated as part of the team because I did not drink at my desk or stay late to drink with the team.

My manager had never been on a real cold call and had no regard for what it means to support your family by being a small business owner. I finally quit when he asked me to go back to my small biz client and get a larger percentage, despite a handshake and a signed contract. He said that yes he had previously approved it but he knew we could get more out of the guy… terrible business practice in my opinion.

I did see a lot of upward movement within the company but only for the popular, party crew.

I’m disheartened and truly sorry to read about some of my colleagues’ experiences here. I work in tech in NA, and haven’t dealt with those specific issues.

Groupon as a company isn’t perfect – It does feel like the heydays are over, lots of really talented people that built Groupon have left, and the company feels stagnant (re: stock).

However, I still feel privileged to work on -specifically my team- at Groupon. The culture is supportive, people are friendly and the company is definitely family friendly. I’m able to take time off and work from home whenever I need or want to. For tech, there’s a clear ladder of growth and a structured promotion/pay increase cycle. Obviously the pay isn’t as good as some of the larger tech players around, but I feel that I’m well compensated.

I worked in the Customer Service Department my first few years after graduating from college. It was a decent experience and I met a lot of really awesome people I am still in contact with, but it still left something to be desired. Upward mobility was pretty laughable. Even if you were consistently rated highly in the department or on your team you were often passed over for other roles because people wanted to hire or move their friends from other departments. On top of that the “raises” were absolutely ridiculous. After
being a top rep on my team and finishing well in the department standings
I was offered a $900 raise (highest amount for my team, too) for the entire year. Starting pay was only $30k which is far too low for the workload and bs you have to put up with, especially when they were requiring a college degree when I was working there (to give you an idea of the bs level – people were consistently so stressed they cried in the bathrooms). Management were pretty skeezy about the whole outsourcing half of our job to India. They repeatedly said we were not going to become a call center, yet the on-phone hours consistently went up until we were on the phone the entire work day while still having to clean up the mess the email reps in India often left. Then a bunch of upper management left for other jobs anyway. I ended up developing throat issues from talking on the phone all day every day for two years and when I came in one day after losing my voice temporarily I figured they’d let me do emails for the day to recuperate, but no, they told me I had to get on the phones or go home.

The only benefits were the people and the health insurance/vacation policy were pretty decent, but just not worth putting up with all the nonsense in the CS department.

Groupon is a great environment for young adults You meet amazing people. However, there is a lot to do for the work life balance. It doesn’t feel like family friendly especially for working mums.
For career development, it depends on the position. For now, the career path is fine but the next step is still needed to be defined. Managers might need more support and guidance for the career development of their team members.

Groupon is the worst company I’ve ever worked for, I was there for less than a year and it felt like 10 years under water. Maybe Groupon in the States and other regions is better but in Latam is completely aweful, the payment goes to the floor when you’re a female, there’s no real chance of career advancement, there’s plenty of bullying or mobbing without consequences and the bullys are protected from HR. The ambiance is horrible, acusations, lies, harrasement, etc.
I’m just happy I got out from that place and I left that experience behind me.

Groupon has an excellent, rigorous sales training program. It was a great way for me to build strong skills that I transferred to an external role, but employees’ success and satisfaction at Groupon largely depends on their manager. Senior sales managers were predominantly male, though there were a few women at the top who were renowned for leading top teams (but eventually left the company). The nature of sales is very competitive, so this certainly isn’t exclusive to Groupon, but I experienced multiple instances of men duplicating accounts in Salesforce and sending a contracts (and thus earning commission) to businesses I had spent months to close, without ever seeing them get reprimanded. Groupon cares about their bottom line, not their workforce (thanks to and also causing high turnover). Women who do well here are gritty and competitive. Employees outside of sales (in Editorial, Marketing, HR, etc.) tend to be much happier, though Groupon does encourage all new hires to begin through their sales training program.

The people is very friendly, they were always willing to help or teach. In addition, Groupon offers many ways to learn about different languages and technologies. The company has many activities for their employees too, so it was fun to work there. The payment was a bit low, and salary increases were not good, so finally I left because another company offered a better salary. The other problem is that the company suddenly closes projects or branches in other countries, so I saw many people that were not in IT being fired, or people in IT changing to a different project because their project was frozen/closed, so we were worried about losing our job too. Probably the people with better chances to advance in their career are the ones in projects for USA or EMEA.

I made a ton of friends while at Groupon that I still cherish dearly, but the culture here when I worked there wasn’t the best. Career opportunities were lacking, and the pay was rather low. Not to mention the ups and downs of the company itself affecting career advancement and job longevity. It was a great place to get a foot in the door but not the best to create a career.

At LATAM we have a serious issue about equal pay cos we have a 30% average gap between M&F in same level positions.