The Trade Desk Reviews

Pros

C-Suite is visible and transparent, employees come from a variety of backgrounds and all support TTD's vision and mission, great benefits and perks, opportunity to travel, strong focus on maintaining special culture with high growth

Advice to Management

Pay attention to your team, listen to them, and truly help them grow. Your team's success is a reflection of your ability as a manager. Believe in them and don't set them up for failure.

Pros

Top of the line benefits (medical, dental, 401k, stock)
Free snacks and food
Ventura is beautiful-close to the beach

Advice to Management

Executive management at The Trade Desk is wonderful ... so it seems. Unfortunately, everyone is blinded by the stock prices and maintaining a false “happiness”. Work life balance is nonexistent. For women especially, moving up is quite challenging. They boast of collaboration yet your ideas are constantly shut down by the “older generation” who have fear of change ... fear that you will take their job. So improvements remain stagnant. In order to get promoted, you have to be on call 24 hours, 7 days a week, brown nose, and dedicate your LIFE to The Trade Desk. It’s much different than what they advertise publicly “Work Life Balance” and “Flexibility”. No one in my department has a life. There’s inappropriate behavior, borderline sexual harassment, discrimination … not a positive place to be long term. TTD is proud to be one of “The Best Places to Work” ... not if you have integrity, a family or an active personal life. TTD doesn’t care about you as a person like they used to. Honestly, they feel their benefits make up for the abuse. HR is nonexistent and are not employee friendly. You address what would be consider to be serious issues and you’re frowned upon. The cycle continues. You watch people come in with bright eyes, inspired and loving the vision… Yet one year later they are physically, mentally, and emotionally drained ... sadly it shows as new hires look aged only a year later. It’s hypocrisy. I used to think that the C level management may be not in the loop on these things, but they are well aware and choose to ignore it by offering great benefits, food, parties and stock options. You can’t buy everyone and will continue to lose great people by not correcting potential liabilities and bullying by middle-management. I love TTD, but something has got to give. Material things will not give a person their life, family and integrity back.

Pros

Great engineering culture that strives to make sure everyone is satisfied and challenged. Asking questions is greatly encouraged, as is helping those who need it. Managers make an honest effort to hear you out and help you grow your career. Trustworthiness and humility are a TTDer's best virtues.

Advice to Management

Growing the team is hard, please stay transparent, especially when we fail or are wrong.

Pros

- Benefits
- Flexibility to pursue other interests within the company
- Passionate environment
- Possibility of Travel
- Global company with exposure to global teams

Advice to Management

There is no such thing as a perfect company, or a perfect culture. Though TTD hides it's flaws well, we are not exempt from that truth. Over 3 years is enough time to know that upper management listens to every word. I give you a 5 because you know how to hire smart people who care.

Pros

They've definitely done well from a product perspective in pushing out quality technology. The trajectory is up and to the right, but it comes at a cost.

Advice to Management

Get strategic. Hire better. Respect that your employees have familial needs and give them the ability to thrive and succeed without having to sacrifice so much at home.

Pros

Great people to work with, I can honestly talk to anyone and we will click. The benefits are okay also and lots of small perks to make you feel special. Management and CEO preach mobility within the company. Free snacks! and catered lunches!

Advice to Management

Keep doing whats been working, I think we should compensate employees better and allow for more of a work life balance.

Pros

The Trade Desk is an outstanding company. Leadership constantly proves that they value their employees. The technical challenges are non-stop and are key to career growth for engineers. Everyone is very helpful and happy. It's a very healthy place to work!

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing. This place has been great for years and continues to be great because management's leadership.

Pros

All the typical Silicon Valley pros like free food, flexible work hours, great comp packages, etc. Upper management is also amazingly receptive to new ideas and loves contributors. Everyone is willing to work extremely hard for a unified vision and goal. The future is very bright, but only if we go and execute at a high level.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what got us here: push the envelope and make bold decisions without sacrificing our relationships with our agencies. At the same time, stay in our lane. We got to where we are by being a top tier DSP. We don't need to be a full stack solution like GMP.

Pros

Clear company vision
Great benefits (medical, dental, 401k, etc.)
Global company allows each office to have its own culture
Solid work-life balance, with monthly morale events (most offices I visited)
Inter-office travel is available if you're on good terms with your manager
Depending on your team, there are some exciting technologies to work on

Advice to Management

Trust is a two-way street.
Sharing your opinion should be valued and not seen as toxic.
Listen to your employees. Managers shouldn't control the narrative.
Allow people to switch managers. More experiences create well rounded people.

Managers should have a thorough knowledge of the produce and what their reports are doing. Having to explain the purpose of a component does not provide much confidence in your manager being able to advocate for you.

You've created a culture of fear where people are scared to speak out for fear of being labeled negative or an instigator. You're not going to grow if you only want to hear positive feedback. Learn to listen before jumping to conclusions about motive.

Pros

Great perks
CEO is great

Advice to Management

You need to allow employees to rate their managers anonymously and these rating should go straight to Jeff. There are too many managers who don't know what they're doing. Upper management should also be evaluated. Some people are dead weight and need to be replaced.