Quantcast Employee Reviews about "middle management"

Pros

-free lunch and good healthcare benefits -Konad's dedication and passion

Cons

-there are about 5+ other display advertising companies that have better and more sophisticated products for online prospecting and retargeting -executive leadership is all over the place and there is never a clear message of which direction the company is going in -there is some type of major organizational restructure or realignment every 6 months -overall, employees seem to be pretty pissed off about pay, middle management, and sales goals -extremely unprofessional behavior in middle management -a lot of teams bad mouth other departments and its quite obvious no one is working towards 1 common goal

Pros

Like many bay area tech companies, you will receive awesome snacks, catered lunch/dinner, and endless amounts of sparkling flavored waters. HQ host many fun events that get different teams involved with each other and supports cross-team collaboration. CEO and ELT are fairly transparent with future goals and current internal problems. Konrad's passion is exciting at first but loses steam once you deal with middle management and poorKonrad's passion is exciting at first but loses steam once you deal with middle management and poorKonrad's passion is exciting at first but loses steam once you deal with middle management and poor ELT decisions. Training is always extremely valuable to keep on top of new trends in the industry.

Cons

Constant employee turnover and rarely see people stay longer than 1 - 1.5 years. During my time at Quantcast, I saw three reorgs that directly affected my role. This causes you to move laterally vs making steps to advance your career. Middle Management is laughable. They have no experience and are given no training to be successful in the role. If you are unlucky and have a manager who cares more about their personal agenda and advancement, you will soon be fired or blamed for any mistake that happens. Or they will just take credit for your work. Finger pointing and blaming others happens constantly and is not looked to be a negative for managers. Instead of working together on a common goal, you will find the excuse "that's not part of my responsibilities", and then play the blame game on teammates all day long. No one wants to take something on that they believe is beneath them or outside of their roles and responsibilities. It's utter laziness.

Pros

Product is best in market, nice office and perks, really nice colleagues and a good atmosphere

Cons

Very poor middle management completely lacking the vision necessary to build a successful team. Poor product and market knowledge in key employees No progression opportunities as outside hires are favored over internal promotions.

Pros

I simply love this company. I've been in this business for few years now and worked for top companies, however this Pre-IPO company, it's an amazing place to work. In this company there are plenty opportunities for employees even if takes time (btw everywhere it takes time!). Considering that such a small company is competing with the big Giants like FB and Google, it's due to 2 factors: 1) the best product on the market 2) amazing talented people Senior Management it's very competent and middle management hard working and helpful. The Leadership team have a difficult job when you are trying to keep investors happy, considering IPO, trying to grow and competing with big giants. Konrad keep going your way, and lead us to become the market leader!

Cons

When you make changes, wait before changing again. if you want to compete with the big giants and hire good people we need to be able to compete with them in terms of salaries. if we want to recruit more top people again, we need to review salaries

Pros

proprietary offering with a product that actually works working alongside brilliant people collaborative environment

Cons

heavy middle management lack of streamlined communication across markets

Pros

They have free food and snacks

Cons

- Top and middle management are ineffectiveTop and middle management are ineffectiveTop and middle management are ineffective and opaque to employees; they just want to feel good about themselves - It's a wonder how they manage to get employees to trust in their vision. The company mission was not easy to visualize. Not many people seem to understand. - As an engineer, it is unlikely that you will learn hottest skillsets of the time. Quantcast does some machine learning but it is not the AI powerhouse as some reviewers call it. Nor is it the best company to learn distributed systems. They say 'big data' but it's not that hot (or hard) anymore. - Because of the above, the breadth and depth of your skillset can vary depending on your team. Some people get in as very good engineers and leave as bad engineers. It's hard to translate the skills you use at Quantcast to those required by other companies, and even if you get lucky, it's even more difficult to be the most sought-after assets. If you want to do cool things, you must be at companies working on the hottest problems. If you want to build core skillsets, you must be at companies with a variety of learning opportunities. Quantcast is not the strongest in either one of those. - Work is all politics. Engineers (especially ML engineers) do nothing interesting due to bottlenecks from office politics and favoritism by managers - Some managers don't care about wellbeing of their subordinates. They want to feel powerful and that's why they stay. Some of them are new and are not trained well. Some of them don't have people skills. Some simply follow the books and don't know how to manage people. Good ones who care either become one of those bad ones, or leave early. - Programmatic advertising (imho) passed its peak and hence almost no upward potential for your career from company growth. So don't expect to grow as the company scales; if you imagine Airbnb, the chances are you are wrong. - Some products have rooms to improve and it's possible to do better. But no one wants to speak up because telling the truth will make people angry. The culture is set in such a way that any critical thinking on their product is not welcome. Flatter may not help the company, but it will help you. - On the same line as above, if you still want to join, you must pretend problems don't exist so that the management, 30000 feet above the ground, wouldn't notice it. If you care too much, you won't do well at Quantcast. If managers can't feel good about themselves because you question them, they will blame you for everything that is or is not an issue. - Every moment of post-mortem is a grilling session. For those who don't know what post-mortem is, it's a meeting in which people should go over any past issues (e.g. server failures). Some managers at Quantcast use it to blame engineers who work for other managers they don't get along with. Being good at blaming and embarrassing engineers is a must. - Fraternity culture. Heavy drinking, heavy hangout. If you enjoy it, this can be an advantage. But remember that give or take exceptions, post-work drinking somewhat relates to your 'performance' - it happens in many places and Quantcast doesn't look like an exception. You have to get in the right group otherwise your life can be hard. Well, same is true for many other companies. Quantcast is one of them that doesn't address the problem correctly. - Favoritism is conspicuous. And it hurts. Won't get into much details here because it can feel serious. Just know that it can hurt your feelings and trigger you to leave. Enough said on this. - The performance review is scheduled so that your politics is rewarded at least as much as results. Regardless of how much results you deliver, you will not be promoted unless managers approve your 'sphere of influence'. Easy to write down but implemented differently at every company. Quantcast seems to use this principle very politically and consequently wrong people get promoted while good people leave. - The company celebrates meetings. More time is spent on meetings than doing work. There were a sizable number of people who start the conversation by 'let's schedule a meeting', or 'let's meet to prepare for the standup'. There were meetings, and pre-meetings, and meetings for meetings. And of course, how often you schedule meetings is one way to measure your influence. - Meetings might look bad for engineers who need to focus, but since there's not much engineering to the product, selling (yes, selling) your product to non-engineers (e.g. ops, sales) takes higher priority. So if you like selling your product to people at your own company, this may not be that bad. Some people love it, and their perspectives should be respected as well. - Middle management doesn't want to address issues in their technology in fear of exposing themselves to blame. It is possible to wonder if the management would rather have engineers sit around than do something. This is probably due to lack of trust in their culture. - Couple of managers love to show off their power. These people have been at Quantcast for a very long time and contributed to building their culture. They can be really rude if they feel their authorities are challenged. If you can hurt your self-esteem by having your manager being extremely rude to you, make sure you get a good person to manage you. Some people (as in many other places in the world) go to work to simply 'feel powerful'. - They don't pay well. They can tell candidates to take a paycut to work at Quantcast because everyone is getting paid less for 'amazing work'. You can guess how wonderful the work environment would be at a company that doesn't want to 'invest' in you. Do extensive cost-benefit analysis on whether the 'awesome work' at Quantcast is worth your paycut. - Too many layers of management. Due to the intense office politics across the company and the kind of people it attracts, lots of engineers want to shift to management. The company promotes them to keep them, who are then coached by existing (toxic) managers.

Pros

Great product & message that the market is very receptive to. Talented and engaging middle management who has a desire to invest in and develop their people. There is a desire to continuously evolve the product, and change with the market. Great set of tools & resources for people to do their job well & succeed. Great benefits & solid workplace perks.

Cons

A very micro-managed sales culture that stems from the Senior Sales Management team. Very old school and outdated management style from the way people are managed down to the metrics & expectations. This begins with less than accurate expectations set through the interview process. The culture in most offices is not a very lively one, and one where there is a "head down" attitude. Management gets in their people's way by trying to take away individuality and promote a machine like "one-size fits all" environment. Not enough internal promotion at the management level. The pay is very much below industry & tech standards. Engineering is the only department that is valued. This company could and should be so much better, but management gets in their own way. The company thrives in spite of these failures.

Pros

As others have mentioned... - Great work life balance - Lunch and dinner - Happy and collaborative environment (although this seems to have changed since I've left)

Cons

- AM/CSS role is poorly thought out - Engineering/product & the sales teams do not communicate and do not work well together - Poor middle and upper management - Unclear company vision (where does Quantcast stand within the adtech landscape?) - Lagging behind in industry trends - Placing bets on certain areas that may not be the best strategy - Hard to move up within the organization