Sinking ship with little signs of recovery - Account Executive Teads Employee Review

Layoffs. Since last summer, there’ve been layoffs three separate times at Outbrain, most recently when it laid off 10% of employees earlier this week. Every time, employees have been assured, “this won’t happen again,” only for it to happen. Fool me once, shame on you… Management’s response to recent layoffs. The morning after the latest layoffs, the company had an unexpected town hall meeting to discuss what’d happened. Before speaking with employees, the co-CEO was smiling, hugging/high fiving workers as if the company hadn’t just let go of 10% of the company. When asked about the reasoning behind the layoffs and the company’s direction, instead of acting human and showing empathy, he gave vague, unhelpful responses and didn’t seem to be saddened by the news. In that moment, he spoke to his employees as if he were being interviewed by a journalist, when he should’ve shown more vulnerability and transparency. Remote policy. Given how lax management has been with the WFH policy (very few people actually come in 2x / week to NYC office), there’s been rumors of them making us come in more now, which won’t help with morale this summer. Morale. Outside of some members of management who’ve been here for 5-15 years and only interact with themselves, there’s no positive company culture at Outbrain. If you’re not a part of the leadership “clique,” employees bascially come in, sit at their desk (where many also eat their lunch) all day until they leave. At the end of the day, a job is just a job, but it’s hard to be proud to work at Outbrain when there’s clearly a divide between the younger, less-tenured Outbrainers and the vets. When younger Outbrains walk by some of the longer-tenured employees, they’ll point their head down and walk right by us as if we don’t exist. Reduced benefits. While we do have the digital nomad policy + added vacation days, we lost our gym/fitness stipend earlier this year. There’s also no Annual Salary Review this year.