99designs Reviews

4.1

88% would recommend to a friend

(65 total reviews)

Patrick Llewellyn

88% approve of CEO

64% positive business outlook

99designs has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 65 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The 99designs employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

65 reviews
1.0
19 Jun 2015

Far from good

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are many things about working at 99 that are great. Full time employees get good benefits like health insurance, gym, commute assist etc.. They also have a nice kitchen stocked up. And generally the people who work there are pretty good.

Cons

But working for 99designs marketing team is extremely challenging. There's a lot of politics that don't help the company move forward. There's a level of nepotism that gets in the way of good work. The Upper upper management clearly have their favorite people who end up having the power to make decisions they are ill equipped to make. Mostly they favor their Australian male mattes. Doesn't matter if you have ten years more experience. If you are american and a woman you will not be heard. The Marketing department doesn't really act like a Marketing department. All they do is data Analysis. The upper management is very hands off and doesn't really care about the team. During my employment there i never exchanged a word with them. There's no vision from the upper management about what the company's brand should look like. And it's very surprising that a company who claims to help business build their brand has very little of their own. The marketing team is reactionary. They function basically on meeting quotas and have no marketing plan beyond a month in advance. Which is bad business if you're in marketing. A few weeks before I left we all got a message from the upper management asking for employees to give them good reviews on glassdoor, which is extremely unethical in my opinion. Note that most reviews here are from designers who work with 99designs platform. They are not employees of 99designs.

1.0
10 Apr 2018

Could be so much better

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

99designs office looks funky and unique. It does create an environment that's fun and comfortable to work in. The CEO is amazing, down to earth and makes the effort to get to know everyone. He hangs out with us and is active to be present in any event we have. He is genuine and he is smart. He works hard and he networks well. Everyone loves him. He has brought the company to new levels and everyone seems motivated to strive for the best. The company cares about the users very much. 99designs is always trying to improve their site to not only meet business goals but to help their users achieve personal goals.

Cons

The unfortunate thing is that they don't hire good managers to support the team. They are not clear with what they want, how they want to improve their product and how to achieve the goals. They are easily swayed by subjectivity and have very weak organisational skills. Senior management are always not at work but they want to micromanage when they are around. They turn out to be roadblocks and yet want to take credit for everything, instead of giving credit to the team. The culture isn't healthy. There are a lot of cliques, and they are not open and welcoming as they put out to be. People make racist remarks and there are a lot of biases given to the popular staff members. Some people are ignored and some people are judged for how they behave, if they are not 'in' the crowd. Swearing seems to be the norm which I think it's ignorant and unpleasant. Social activities are not diverse, not to mention they involve elicit drugs. Even though it's been reported, they do nothing about them.

2.0
18 Apr 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

As the first startup job I'd had, I was star struck. The perks were great! Lots of swag! Happy hour is a blast each week, and a great way to unwind. The flexibility in hours and the ability to work from home (or around the world) was honestly unparalleled and not something I appreciated as much when I was there. Everyone was always easy to get along with, and I usually enjoyed being in the office and chatting with my coworker's, as every person has really unique backgrounds. The good designs that came out of the platform were incredible, and we did bring opportunity to quite a few people across the world, both designers and customers.

Cons

Now, the cons. In the few years I was there, the company went through rapid amounts of change in product and people. The other reviews of nepotism are spot on - forget hard work here, it's not rewarded. There is no rhyme or reason to how people move up, and positions seem to be randomly created based on personal feelings and not skill or performance. Going off that, growth is extremely limited - even if you're promised the opportunity to grow, it rarely manifests. Also, feedback is worthless - product asks for it, but it rarely grows into something that is actually intuitive for our users, as the focus is more on making things "pretty" rather than user friendly. Lastly, the big one is that I'm pretty sure a lot of what we did is illegal. We have no in house counsel and no compliance teams, but regularly deal with copyright and trademark issues. If a copyrighted image is sold to one of 99's big clients, their pocketbooks are bigger than ours and the company will be screwed.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 65 Reviews

Glassdoor has 124 99designs reviews submitted anonymously by 99designs employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if 99designs is right for you.