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Cornerstone OnDemand

Engaged employer

Not much career potential. Poor senior management. Look elsewhere... - Anonymous employee Cornerstone OnDemand Employee Review

1.0
May 7, 2009
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fully paid PPO/HMO medical benefits.

Cons

Cornerstone OnDemand is one of the most horribly run places I have ever worked at. In terms of company cohesiveness, there is none at all. Basically every department is in it for themselves and there is no sense of "US" as a company but rather everything is about my department versus your department. This ends up being very unproductive since rather than working through issues departments end up doing a lot of finger pointing. The software architecture is a disaster in and of itself. It seriously is written as though someone picked up a "Learn C# in 24 Hours" book and then proceeded to write the application for the next ten years. The style in which the application is written extremely outdated and unscalable. There is no sense of abstraction or even a service based structure in the code. There really aren't any standards amongst the developers so there is very poor reuse of previously written code. On the infrastructure side, there were as well many outdated boxes that could have completely brought down the application if any of those servers failed. There was very little in terms of infrastructure that would have allowed for high availability of the application. Overall the quality of the development environment was very poor and it does not facilitate an environment that allows one to learn or grown in his/her career. Senior Management believes that they know how to run a technology organization but in reality they don't know anything at all about software development. Senior management doesn't really listen to any of the people internal so if you're looking to make any drastic changes, then you should probably look elsewhere. This would definitely be a place that I would steer clear of if you're looking to advance your career or learn more about C# or software architecture.

Explore other reviews about Cornerstone OnDemand

5.0
Apr 7, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great leadership. Clear vision for growth and success.

Cons

Acquisitions created competing products and culture.

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Cornerstone OnDemand Response
1mo
Thanks for sharing this; it's great to hear your positive outlook on our leadership and vision as that’s something we really care about. There can be challenges that come along with acquisitions, especially when it comes to aligning products and culture. While these decisions are made to support growth and long-term success, they don’t always feel seamless in the moment. Again, I appreciate you sharing your perspective and wish you all the best. -Carina Cortez, Chief People Officer
2.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Originally, this company was very supportive. There were many layers of resources meant to make employees successful. After the purchase of the company by PE they have cut software, resources and staffing to increase profits. I would not say there are many advantages over other employers in the field today. The ability to work from home is a pro. Complexity of the software is a pro because the work isn't boring. There's always something to learn.

Cons

- no real path to advancement, Cornerstone used to promote from within, over the past several years the majority of hired have been external - management cares a lot about stats but doesn't care to educate employees on how to meet those expectations. Ex. If a employee gets a negative survey it isn't reviewed and strategies aren't shared for improvement. If an issue goes on longer than expected and it puts employees out of compliance with the resolution time standard, employees are told to fix it with no strategies for doing so. There is no analysis of issues. One caveat: my team has a new manager so there is a possibility that things will improve; however the directives come from the top down, so upper management still has a problematic philosophy.

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