CarGurus reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(485 total reviews)
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Jason Trevisan

93% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

CarGurus has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 485 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The CarGurus employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

485 reviews
2.0
Nov 2, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits and pre covid office environment were fine. Has the facade of caring about the employees.

Cons

Clearly this will not be a flattering review and will be buried in the tide of astroturfed 5 star reviews gushing that everything is great. CarGurus advertises itself as a tech company but it is a tech company in the same way WeWork is a tech company. It just so happens to have more people and a more recently developed website compared to its competitors and rides on the coat tails of Facebook and Google to resell advertising services to car dealers. Nothing it does is new or innovative and its "technology" is a monolithic mess that no one knows how it works and no one with the authority to spend the time to fix will want to do. You are tasked with fixing a near decade of technical debt but you have to do it the way your managers want else you are just harassed and bullied until you leave or they finally weaponize HR to just fire you. You will see the salary, the benefits etc... and be lured in but keep in mind that it is unlikely to move up and you will have to move on in a few years to keep your career going. There is no career growth and the usual review processes are setup for everyone to fail so they have an excuse to not give you a pay raise. Management is a mix of internal promotion of people who were there the longest and are drowning trying to do a job they have little experience in and no support or external hires who are the ones in the inadequate hiring process wore the best suit and made the white, middle aged, male managers at the top of the org chart feel the most comfortable. If your boss is the former then you and your team will flail around without direction and be blamed for not meeting unclear, unrealistic and unfair expectations. If your boss is the latter then you will either do what they say regardless of if it is the right thing to do or as previously stated be made to feel so uncomfortable you leave or your manager using HR to come up with some reason to get rid of you, mainly so they can hire in their friends from their previous company. COVID-19 caused the offices to be closed and people to work remotely which is something senior management railed against constantly when asked and in communications since have been trying to get support for opening the offices as soon as possible so they can go back to having their staff under their thumb in the office once again. Of course the no one works from home rule is for some and not others as plenty of people had unwritten agreements with their bosses about being able to work remotely and quite frankly the resistance to not wanting to do so is just an attempt from poor management to control their staff because they don't trust they will work unless they can be surveyed from a corner office. The CEO is absentee and just wants to run a forever startup and has lost interest going as far to moving all the new product work to a subsidiary and moving all the people he liked into it so they can play in the sandbox forever and ignore a directionless company whose stock is around a third of what it was at its peak. Langley if you are not interested in running CarGurus then sell your stake and go start something else. Clearly you are happier in that initial flurry of activity with a start up. The rest of the executive board are yes men at best and negative contributors at worse with the board room being a game of musical chairs to who is going to get the blame for the latest mess. This is getting long so I will just summarize: Not a tech company, a marketing and advertising services company The technology that does exist is a shambles Senior management are absentee or underqualified Middle management are every stereo type of petty to underqualified HR is Catbert but with better PR people to write their nasty grams You will never get a pay raise Everything is your fault unless you are friends with senior management then no matter what mess you make it is never your fault

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CarGurus Response
5y
We appreciate you leaving this thorough review. First, we would like to thank you for all of your hard work at CG. We acknowledge that we have work to do to further improve our internal policies and procedures to allow us to create an even more collaborative and transparent working culture for all areas of our business. With that being said, in no way do we stand for or tolerate any forms of harassment, bullying, or unkind treatment towards our employees. Anyone found committing or participating in said actions is eligible for termination. We urge you, if you know of specific situations, to please reach out to your HR Business Partner to report them. We take this feedback very seriously would welcome the opportunity to further discuss your concerns and frustrations to better our CarGurus community. Please reach out to me at (aeldridge@cargurus.com). – Andrea Eldridge, Chief People Officer
2.0
Sep 29, 2017

Avoid a sales role at all costs

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Food (don't you dare get in line early though!), snacks, beer, coffee, outings. Generally a good office atmosphere with a good view. Pay is good but was rapidly declining. From a day to day, the pros vary based on department. Life is probably great in engineering, marketing and HR. They probably enjoy autonomy, valued work and a lack of micro-management. Not so much in sales/dealer relations.

Cons

This was both my favorite job ever, and my worst. Years ago, this was the best sales job in Boston but with new mgmt came new priorities. Morale plummeted within a year like I've never seen before. Micro-mgmt to an insane degree, placing ALL the blame on sales and not the decision making of senior leadership, changing goals/metrics on a dime (based on whatever the flavor of the month was), and just an overall decline in enjoying being part of something we all helped grow. Yeah, there was food and games..but those became taboo and you typically ate at your desk and avoided the gameroom. Promotions here are 100% ALL optics /favoritism and nothing more. Work a Saturday, lots of reply-all emails, be vocal to the right people...BOOM, promotion! Most importantly, avoid the various sales departments at all costs. You've never met a group of people more miserable then those on sales. Again, it used to be the greatest sales job in Boston but it only took about 12 months to make it a miserable place to be. Constant fear of losing your job; sneak attack firings, mgmt out for themselves and does not have your back; zero culpability from mgmt for anything. The popular move became Dealer Relations since the US market is fully sold at this point (though they will never admit it). On this team your responsible for existing account upsells into a dead banner-ad market and renewals that reach 120% in increased price...seriously. Imagine having that conversation every day of your working life. But that team is 100 people now and there is nothing to cross-sell at all. The good news here is you don't actually fear for your job on this team (hence the move for sales here). And now CG is about to go public so it's even further downhill from here. Keep looking, Boston is a thriving market and there are tons of great jobs out there from companies that offer good pay and autonomy.

1.0
Aug 4, 2020

Covid has ruined us.

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It was an incredible place to work before covid. Fair, engaging, fun, great pay.

Cons

Right now they don’t have a dime to pay sales and it’s evident. Can’t book anything because it covid and the goals are somehow higher than they were before? People in sales are lucky if they’re making a third of their OTE monthly commission and probably one tenth or less of what they’re used to making. Not only is the pay horrible during covid but they were able to find 100k to donate to social justice while their own reps are scraping, thanks guys. And get ready to be lectured beyond belief about your political views, every day there’s another book club or seminar about white fragility. It’s really sad to see where this company has come after being such a great place to work no so long ago.

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CarGurus Response
5y
Thank you for taking the time and providing this feedback. We understand that this is a challenging time for our Sales organization and we’re all working hard to make positive changes to help all of our reps in the face of changing quotas and shifting targets. But here at CarGurus, we strongly believe in advancing the cause of racial justice as part of our efforts to lean into learning, communication, and action in pursuit of meaningful change. We believe that we all have a responsibility to lean into our commitment to Integrity and take a stand on issues that impact all of us and our society as a whole. If you wish to discuss this at any time, please reach out at mmcgarry@cargurus.com or your HRBP. - Matt
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Glassdoor has 541 CarGurus reviews submitted anonymously by CarGurus employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if CarGurus is right for you.