Great for interns, bad for long term career - Project Developer Nielsen Employee Review

2.0
Jun 26, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

INSURANCE: Good health insurance, company puts $400-500 in an HRA for you every year. Insurance (UHC) itself is decent, it covers a lot depending on your plan. Eye insurance (VSP) is great, every time I go to the eye doctor they tell me how great it is, I get a free pair (up to $180) of frames and significant discounts off lenses. Dental is nothing special, but they cover all the basics. Prescriptions are through Caremark/CVS, they force you to do mail-order on refills, which is annoying but you get a discount. VACATION/HOLIDAYS: You get the 9 main holidays off. Depending on what department you are in you also can have a half-day on the day before the holiday. Good news is they just upped the vaca time to 15 days + 3 personal days, but these do not roll over. OTHER BENEFITS: Depending on job/department, you can work from home anytime you want. I have people on my team that are 100% remote workers. Company has several employee groups to get involved in on a variety of topics (Environmental, Healthy Lifestyles, Women Associates, Disability Advocates, Veterans, LGBT, etc.)

Cons

Everything is contingent upon having a good manager and helpful team. Some teams are great to be on and you can take your vacation days and only work your 8 hour (annual average) days. However, if you draw the short straw and get stuck on a team with a terrible manager and lousy co-workers then you better hope you are the favorite, otherwise work-life balance is non-existent, because you will get stuck working weekends and 12+ hour days, in addition say goodbye to the vacation days, because you will not have any time to take them. Your chances to be on either type of team are about 50/50. For the most part, things are very political and bias is taken into account for merit and career advancements. Sad part is that HR is aware of this issue, because it has been brought to there attention on multiple occasions. Could also be the source of the high turnover rate. In addition, there is not much room for career advancement opportunities unless you are willing to switch career paths. In addition, nothing is really done to help provide insight or training into other areas of the business, if you did want to switch. Pay is low in relation to comparable positions at other companies.

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5.0
Apr 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Was a great job with great benefits

Cons

No cons at all honestly

1.0
Apr 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Absolutley nothing. Which is a tragedy, because Nielsen was once an absolutely great place to work. I wanted to retire here. The culture used to be great, and I really loved being a part of this place. I loved my team, my management, and the people. Then along came the current CEO who is the classic example of a person who knows the cost of everything, but the value of nothing. He took over and ran the company full speed ahead in to the iceberg. And to try and save the sinking ship, he laid off literally thousands of highly experienced, highly trained, and highly engaged people to replace them with fresh overseas hires who know nothing about the company and expect them to be trained from the ground up to replace literally centuries of collective expererience and client relations. It's a disaster. This CEO shouldn't be trusted to run a lemonade stand.

Cons

Everything. Pay, job security, culture, management. Nothing is good here anymore. Don't take a job here unless you are truly desperate. And even then, it should only be as a stop-gap until you can find something else.

5
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