Ancestry Reviews

3.5

58% would recommend to a friend

(785 total reviews)
avatar

Howard Hochhauser

75% approve of CEO

55% positive business outlook

Ancestry has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 785 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Ancestry employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

785 reviews
1.0
20 Feb 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get a free gym membership along with your contract. There are some free lunch sometimes... well you might enjoy it if you are lucky enough to be working day shift on that day and your lunch break is at a normal time (so quite unlikely).

Cons

As a Customer Solutions Associate - This place is a fake friendly workplace - Bad working times (late evenings and weekends unavoidable) and there's no rotation. They will tell you during the interviewing process that the working times are flexible and that you will be able to arrange them to your particular needs but this is not exactly true. The groups of new recruits are given different schedules to chose from when they start (recruits are left alone in a room to fight among eachothers for the schedule they want) and once the schedules are chosen you keep it for as long as you work with them. Everybody's schedule is different but everyone has to work at least one weekend day and some late evenings each week. - Bad atmosphere. They sell themselves as a very friendly company with a relaxed atmosphere, it could not be further away from the truth. I've worked in a few call centers, none of them was so demanding and unfriendly. You are so tightly monitored that not only your calls but also your screen is recorded. You cannot put your headset away for a minute to talk to a collegue because the phone does not ring out loud, it rings low in your headset. The targets are almost unacheivable for any normal person, they will fire you without hesitation even if you arrive on time, are never sick and work hard everyday just because your calls are 1 or 2 minutes longer than they should be... I spent 6 months in that company and it felt like the toughest and more depressing time of my life. I recommend everybody looking for a rewarding and human call center job to keep away from that place.

1.0
8 Aug 2018

Avoid!!!

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The colleagues Weekly free lunches Great Sports & Social Club Benefits are quite good

Cons

Despite the fact that I made amazing friends in the year that I worked there, and despite the perks and benefits the company offers, I absolutely do not recommend working at Ancestry. For starters, the job ad did not state that this is call center work, so the disappointment was rather great when I figured out what this job actually was, and I was not alone! It took me a good few months to notice it, but management absolutely does not have your back. Everything you do (every call you take, every email you write, every minute you may spend away from your desk) is monitored and then thrown at you in 1-1s where you need to explain why you may have forgotten to offer something to the client (even though the job description never mentioned sales) or why you have spent an additional 3 minutes to go to the bathroom. I don't know how many verbal warnings I received for the smallest things. After calling in sick, you are to meet with your manager and then have to state the reason for your absence and sign a document promising not to be sick in the future. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be treated like a criminal each time I'm moving around the office. The job is not easy to begin with as you often deal with frustrated customers, and when you know your manager won't have your back, it makes work all the more difficult. One of my favorite moments was being yelled at by a customer for verifying her account. Insisting on the company policy and data protection, I had to call the manager line a few times, where I was told to keep insisting on the policy. When said customer was finally put through to the manager, she was all of a sudden able to get what she wanted WITHOUT the verification of her account. It's nice to see that one frustrating call could have been avoided, but I suppose it's easier when your employees are dealing with these calls. This is one of very many examples. I'm very glad those days are behind me.

1.0
5 Jun 2018

Would not recommend

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Gym, food and drinks, nice office

Cons

Disrespectful, micro-management, no recognition of good work

Viewing 1 - 3 of 785 Reviews

Glassdoor has 908 Ancestry reviews submitted anonymously by Ancestry employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Ancestry is right for you.