ESPN reviews

4.0

79% would recommend to a friend

(1,301 total reviews)
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James Pitaro

93% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

ESPN has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 1,301 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The ESPN employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Audiovisual y medios de comunicación industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

1K reviews
3.0
Jul 10, 2013

A good place to start your career, but you won't stay long.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fun and exciting place to work. Lots of fun people work there, and you'll be spending a lot of time with them in and out of work. ESPN people are a definite clique in Bristol, which can be a Pro or Con. The company picnic at Lake Compounce is a great time.

Cons

Pay is low because it can be. There's no shortage of resumes coming to this place, so they don't have to pay much to get people to fill roles. Instead they pay you in the ability to say "I work at ESPN" and put those four letters on your resume when you do leave. If you're like most people, you'll make just enough to scratch by living in a small apartment in Bristol. Rather high turnover, because they hire a lot of young people who get their feet wet, get a little ESPN experience, then get the heck out of Bristol for a better city with more pay. Bristol is an ugly, boring, somewhat run down little town. You may move out here from someplace else to start that "Dream Job" at ESPN, only to find yourself in a place that isn't exactly full of entertainment options and quite a bit worn in places. Not a knock on the company, per se, but may negatively effect your morale and desire to be here. Not going to lie; drugs & booze are most definitely prevalent in this companies subculture. Don't step out of line or HR will punish you severely here. People can, have, and will be fired over the silliest little non-politically correct office prank, joke, or questionable email. They can publish racy photos of naked athletes in ESPN the Magazine, but share those photos at work or (God forbid) display them in your cubicle - that's a trip to sensitivity training with HR, or worse. There really aren't college sports mascots walking around the halls. ;-)

1.0
Apr 2, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The technology, some of the worker-level employees are great people. If you're a sports fan there's monitors showing sports in a lot of places about the workplace. The technical people are great.

Cons

They demand a 12 hour workday of everyone who is salaried: from the lowest paid admins to the managers. Very high turnover as people are misled when hired and told the long hours are "just temporary". Some of the managers are verbally abusive, others are hiring their friends and relatives regardless of competency: relatives with no skills for a particular job will get promoted over highly skilled employees. Very bad place to work.

3.0
Mar 29, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good entry-level pay. Health insurance package. Looks great on your resume.

Cons

Be extra careful - Management has a history of forcing people to resign before the end of their probation period. Management will give you a bad performance review, and then refuse to let you see your own work records or any "official evidence". Whenever your manager has verbal communication with you, via face-to-face or over-the-phone, make sure it is followed up with an email, because email is the only thing the company will officially recognize. Also make personal copies of all emails concerning your work performance and contact with management. If you are forced to resign, and have to file for unemployment, make sure you tell the dept of labor exactly what happened, especially when there has been no "official written record" of you being forced to resign. Watch your back at all times.

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