Reviews by job title

6 reviews
5.0
16 Apr 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Amazing colleagues who are indeed enthusiastic about chess and building a global company

Cons

Very remote, although we have one big gathering once a year

5.0
26 Jul 2023

The best company I've worked for

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Chess.com's culture is simply exceptional, I'm grateful for the best colleagues who make every day a joy to work here!

Cons

Haven't found any so far.

2.0
8 Jul 2025

Interesting product, challenging teams

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* Depending on your team, projects can be fun, with direct feedback from consumers. * Work on a product enjoyed by millions of users in a fast-growing environment. * Some great people in the company. * Flexibility over where you work (100% remote) * Annual international all-inclusive retreat

Cons

* A number of senior members of staff at the company lack decent people skills, and do not act in the interest of their colleagues. This can lead to some catastrophic issues for people at the company. * The company functions like a “family”. Depending on how you value that, this could be a pro. However, it also leads to a lack of transparency around formal processes. * All overseas staff outside US are contractors: no healthcare, pension, etc. * Slow career progression with not a lot of opportunities to grow. * Fully-remote company with poor resources in their People/HR teams - slow response times, poor communication in the case of issues which need to be addressed. * A lot of employees working very independently, and not a lot of joint up work across teams. * Several periods of layoffs impacting job confidence.

5.0
11 Dec 2023

Amazing company

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great atmosphere, colleagues are super nice Open time off policy & annual company meetup

Cons

I can't think of any

3.0
21 Mar 2023

Not as great anymore

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Fully remote - Large scale projects - Opportunities to learn a lot - Great colleagues - Great culture (though, a bit deteriorating lately, see below) - Yearly company-wide meetups (great thing, considering everyone works remotely, to actually see people you interact daily, face-to-face)

Cons

Things have changed in the last couple of years, as the company grew from small, family-like business to a big US corporation (management will deny this, but it is the truth). The new CTO didn't fit too well with the existing engineering team (and are probably getting tired of each other), so he surrounded himself with people who nod to whatever he wants. Especially with one of the projects they are pushing company wide, causing a lot of issues for engineers (and almost all engineers completely dislike that particular thing). Many senior engineers are burned out. Website had a ton of issue lately, as all the efforts have been pushed towards building new shiny features, instead of scaling or maintaining existing ones. It's definitely not all bad, but it's just worse than it was.

avatar
Chess.com Response
3y
First and foremost, thank you for sharing this feedback. I’m grateful for you taking the time to call out the positives as part of this post. With your tenure, you’ve seen us operate with less than 100 team members all the way to the 650+ of today, and we would not be where we are without your years of support. One thing that has not changed is our commitment to maintaining a great place to work for a fully-remote, async team of passionate, brilliant, lifelong-learners and chess-lovers. You are right, the company has had to transform with scale, and this has been one of the more challenging parts of growth. There is an understanding that some elements of culture are forced to change along the way, and we’ve believed in a mutual responsibility to ensure it changes for good. We have looked to our core values to serve as guardrails for this type of change, and I would love to hear more about where you feel we may have misfired on this so we can work together on improving it. I also appreciate your feedback for leadership both individually and in our strategic planning. We’re excited about the knowledge, passion, and energy our CTO has brought to the team and would love to understand your experiences here more deeply. This topic is difficult to address with the appropriate amount of privacy in an open forum, but please understand that a receptive audience always exists for any leadership feedback, and you can always bring concerns to Erik or I for an honest and constructive discussion. We have felt the pain of growth, and while we believe deeply in the power and appeal of chess, we were very cautious in our acceptance of the sudden and rapid growth of global chess interest. However, we believe our member growth and the infrastructure needs to support that also grew at a rate beyond what even more aggressive projections would’ve provided for. We’re immensely grateful to the team rallying to support us through this, and we are heavily-focused on long term strategic scaling efforts to ensure this is a lesson learned, not repeated. After two years of record hiring numbers, we’re continuing to aggressively build the teams to support our scaling efforts and help everyone maintain balance in this new normal for the game of chess. Of course, with rapid growth, we further the cycle of transformation, and need to keep receiving this type of feedback from team members like yourself to ensure we’re seeing things from all angles and able to maintain a place to work just as great as the one you joined years ago, even if it looks a little (or a lot) bigger. Thank you again, sincerely, and I would encourage you to reach out internally to Erik or I to continue this conversation privately and confidentially. Sincerely, Brendan Woodroff
4.0
10 Feb 2025

CTO doesn't do anything

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Chess is first, chess pros for colleagues, and Erik is boss

Cons

The chess market is subject to wild external swings, making it harder to determine our effect.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 6 Reviews

Glassdoor has 152 Chess.com reviews submitted anonymously by Chess.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Chess.com is right for you.