FreeWheel Reviews

If you weren't here for over 3 years, you are treated like second class. The "original" FreeWheel people are extremely cliquey and management (in that group) only promotes from their own. There is no clear measurement for what it takes to move up levels and feedback from management on how to get to the next level is non-existent. You either are in the group, or you're not. I'm only staying for the paycheck and to leverage easy work environment for now while I look to find a company with career opportunities to really grow. People are leaving in swarms due to the culture change and it's very clear management does not care. They like to gossip and chat, but work is not recognized and coaching is non-existent. Those that get promoted are friends with management and are promoted to positions they aren't ready for. Very hard to see a future here.

The StickyAds acquisition was the worst possible move that could have been made by FreeWheel. The team tasked with the evaluation of this acquisition was extremely ill-equipped to run such an evaluation, and the result was an acquisition that felt like the deal terms were struck in the private room of a strip club (read: sleazy) without any due diligence done outside of whether they would make good drinking partners. The product and the team that came over were in complete discordance with the business FreeWheel had run up to this point. Where FreeWheel had focused on strong, trust based service, the StickyAds team focused on swindling their customers under the guise of false transparency. The product barely functioned, and was quite embarrassing for those of us who were client facing at the time. The acquisition also came on the heels of what would become at least 2 years of constant re-org (my understanding is that they have yet to settle on a consistent, functional org structure to this day). This left the majority of employees, at least on the FW platform side of the business feeling disenfranchised and confused, while watching the teams on the StickyAds side of the business be supported in their every "effort", most of which surrounded the best way to do the least amount of work and drink the most amount of rose. During this time, promotions and career development went on hold for the majority of the business, most of us being told that no changes could be made until the org was finalized, while others were promoted sometimes 2-3 levels for no apparent reason, having made no apparent contribution to the company other than agreeing with management and not asking too many questions. Leadership made a great show of asking for feedback via forums, office hours, surveys, etc. None of the feedback that was given was operationalized, and in a few personal conversations with leadership I was told that the complaints being voiced by the majority of the company were "immature" and "unrealistic" When a mass exodus occurred last summer by the majority of the Product team and several other long term employees, this was excused by leadership as "some people aren't meant to work for large companies" without accepting any ownership of the fact that the company culture was crumbling.