Glassdoor to Getty Images, Corbis, Masterfile

[Matthew Chan]

Thanks to SG's referral, I found the Glassdoor employee reviews of Getty Images, Corbis, and Masterfile quite enlightening.

Clearly, there is a lot of internal strife, turnover, turmoil, and morale issues at Corbis. You will never read about this in any of the trade rags but thanks to Glassdoor, we get clues as to how badly Corbis seems to be doing from the inside.

Regarding Getty Images, morale is a little better. Some comments about the recent buy-out and being managed by a private equity firm.

I found one comment particularly enlightening.

Getty is simply a company in a tailspin that isn't making any material efforts to save themselves. They like to talk roadmaps and handout little books on management de jour, but when it comes time to get accountable, everybody disappears. if it wasn't for the acquisition of istockphoto and allowing that business to run unmolested, Getty would have packed it up awhile ago.

It seems istockphoto and its low-cost model appears to be a performance gem according to one employee.

The company is for sale and most teams and resources are focused on reducing operational costs to make the bottom line look better to potential buyers. Many long-time employees have been let go, entire teams are being outsourced. There is no longer any pride or upside to working at this company, the most talented people have already left and there is an ongoing exodus of the people that remain. This is a dead end career for all but the senior managers that own stock and stand to cash out when the company is bought or goes public.

[SoylentGreen]

Wow.  People at Corbis are pissed..!  Who knew?
I like this comment re Corbis:

"HR types and managers are obviously posting the 5 star reviews of the company, that is laughable. Start doing assessments of yourselves and the organization, make the necessary changes needed in order to move forward. Clean up your image by leading by example. You aren't doing it today and you are allowing poor decisions by junior leaders. Growing up is tough but so is unemployment."

S.G.

[Moe Hacken]

This is very fascinating information about the workings of these strategic litigation sweatshops.

It's wise to get to know the enemy as well as possible. Perhaps some disgruntled employees will consider joining this forum and telling us more about the Kool-Aid they drink over there.