Pros
Was a good stepping-stone to get into fast-paced and exciting industry. Opened a door into the Bay Area tech scene.
Cons
- Inexperienced C-levels that were absent during turmoil. Showed minimal desire to help grow their employees professionally. - Management was so lousy that they overlooked inappropriate behavior (of skilled employees) and it became the norm. - Be cautious of employers calling work a “family”. They consistently used manipulative language and built up false narratives of how the company will support its employees. - Pay inequities and poorly executed layoffs showed that the C-Levels did not know how to run a company (or a “family”) properly. They built this business on an unstable foundation in which not everyone is equal; promotions and raises went to their “favorites” and anyone who openly praised the C-levels. The majority of the company felt extremely disrespected, undervalued, and unappreciated. The workload distribution tipped laborious for the hard workers while unmotivated friends received the benefits of income. - The clearest indication of favoritism was when the C levels placed a pay structure that paid their friends at the company 700% more than other people doing a similar role. There was no merit to this extreme wage gap, especially when they provided this for poor performance. Unfortunately, they say they’ve learned but they are still justifying their favorable treatment of friends until the present day. - Gender and racial pay inequality is still a problem despite their claims of “learning”. Shocking if you consider the race and gender mix of the C-levels. Since they reply to these reviews, I challenge them to publish anonymized data of the payments distribution (for the SF teams, 2017 to 2020). - C-levels didn’t have the foresight to solve problems in time. If they were honest about accountability and accepting responsibility, they would have introspected. When the CEO decided to take off for a full year, he came back to a dumpster fire and took no accountability. Instead, one at a time, most of the top performers felt uninspired, leading to resignation. - I felt that management’s behavior, mission, and culture clashed fiercely with my principles. Most people felt the same way. - After interviewing other tech jobs in the Bay Area, I realized that this experience (ad network) did not add much value or provided any marketable skills to my resume. As some have said, their reputation hurt my interview process on a couple occasions (ex-clients).