Ancestry Employee Reviews
Out of 108 Ancestry employee reviews, 65% were positive. The remaining 35% were constructive reviews with the goal of helping Ancestry improve their work culture. The Engineering team, with 81% positive reviews, reports the best experience at Ancestry compared to all other departments at the company. The Marketing team offered the most constructive feedback, with 38% of that department's reviews constructive in nature.
Briefly describe your overall experience at your company
What do you like best about the leadership team?
supportive, kind, smart, gives us opportunities
Attracting a great combination of new executives in our company who bring deep domain expertise across consumer tech and DNA.
They are creating an environment of company growth, and positive employee engagement. They communicate company information well to the employees, and are available for employee feedback and discussion. Everyone is important and what they do is important. I feel valued and appreciated.
They're changing to the better!
Review from Engineering Dept
Understands the challenges in front of them
Review from Marketing Dept
What does the leadership team need to get better at?
Be visionaries and leaders, not administrators; dont' tell lies to appease concerns within but be honest or don't say anything. You've become so good, you deceive even yourselves, thinking that's what they want to hear. Be unified and be an example by knowing your area of responsibility.
Review from Engineering Dept
Getting better eq. Firing senior leaders is very disruptive to people who work on the teams and doesn’t create a culture of psychological safet
Drive the culture of the company forward
Creating a culture of accountability that includes themselves.
Knowing the product. Knowing the user. Respecting the employees. Being honest & transparent. Read: tell the truth.
What is the best part about your compensation package?
Shares/stock options are decent and go up in value quickly. Only issue is as a privately owned company you can't cash out unless there is a liquidity event which are infrequent
The long term equity potential
Health Insurance, working remotely, and PTO.
Base salary is great and RSUs especially the company will go IPO soon
Review from Engineering Dept
It's fair and makes me feel valued.
Review from Marketing Dept
Why do you feel undervalued and what would make you feel better about your compensation?
Health insurance offered is high deductible.
CFO and leadership say you should be loyal, what we do is important. They have major stock and bonuses but tell those underneath to feel privileged to work here. Discredit others that pay and reward as not being good companies. We target top talent but mid to low market stock....compensation.
Review from Engineering Dept
Compensation is low compared to the market and the company knows this and has no plans to change it.
Lower than average market base pay, terrible equity compensation, benefits sub par
The company keeps trying, but continues to fail at paying market rate.
What are some of the best things about your team?
Irrespective of the failings of the management team the agents are great to work for.
Passionate, hard-working, domain experts, honest, great people.
Review from Engineering Dept
The rank and file are good people
Our team is highly passionate about family history and the team are experts in how we can improve products for customers.
The collaboration of ideas. The executives also have open office hours, so they are available for discussions on any work-related topic.
What do your coworkers need to improve and how could you work together better?
Very siloed organisation. Lots of turf wars
Before Covid, Ancestry didn't get what it takes to be a collaborative and inclusive company. But since it was walled garden, the attitude was go along or leave. With Covid, the broken culture is exacerbated. New leadership who should know better make it worse. Now, people just leave. In droves.
Communication is a little disorganized sometimes
What is most positive about the culture and environment at your company?
Individual contributors do their best, some have become protective. Culture slowly changing to be more collective-focused rather than silos of ownership. But very slow going.
Review from Engineering Dept
Working from home is great
Team work aligned to vision and customer impact
There is a win/win team culture at the office. It makes it easier to manage through difficult situations, which are a part of work-life. I consider them my Ancestry family.
It's a really collaborative culture.
Review from Marketing Dept
What needs to change to make the company culture better?
The culture is broken cause of constant leadership turnover. A new one comes in and establishes culture and is out in 2 years.
Executives should consider valuing their employees as much as they value their shareholders; there is very little focus on employee morale and overall employee compensation and rewards
Some of the leadership are more political and toxic, cares more about image and are insecure
Review from Marketing Dept
Management don't care about the company's employees. At all. And until that changes, people will continue to be dissatisfied and the culture will stay as it is.
There are so many things at Ancestry which are broken.
Review from Marketing Dept
What did you like most about the interview process?
The interview process was organized
Good cross-section of the team. Low pressure and high engagement.
Meeting someone who worked at Ancestry and learning about their experience working at Ancestry. It is always a two way interview process. To see if I have the skill set that Ancestry is looking for, and to see if the Ancestry way is the best fit for me.
Was challenging (in a good way), and I met alot of people throughout the process which gave me good insight into the company and culture, helping me decide that this was a company I wanted to be part of.
Review from Marketing Dept
they did a very good job and being on time for everything
What would you improve about your company's interview process?
Too slow and too many intereviews
The bar is set very low, but the ineptitude of leadership is high. That makes it very hard to hire.
What makes you most happy at work?
Great company, clear vision, huge customer benefit.
Seeing a successful outcome to a challenge or project. And connecting with people.
Challenging projects Making an impact Leadership team appreciate us
Review from Engineering Dept
Working with my amazing team members
Review from Engineering Dept
the team structure in my organization. Also having a free and flexible environment to work comfortably.
What's going wrong and how can it be improved?
The product only works for white people
some of the leadership is toxic and focused on looking good vs doing what's right
Review from Marketing Dept
Middle management either needs to be improved, or removed, one or the other.
Everything is broken on the user side. But nobody is fixing these things.
Review from Marketing Dept
the culture is best described as "bare minimum effort".
What would you most like to see improved at your company?
More clear goals around ideas.
Review from Engineering Dept