Zeta Global Reviews

Pros

Great company to work for, with a nice life and work balance.

Cons

Growing too fast, acquiring too many companies, leaving people behind.

Pros

Because everything is in such constant disarray, there is opportunity to take charge, learn a lot about the programmatic advertising space, and hold a lot of responsibilities.

Cons

To me, the number, recency, and sentiment of one-star reviews posted on Zeta’s glassdoor profile fittingly exposes Zeta as the subpar and disorderly company that Zeta is. The problem, to me, stems from the fact that Zeta’s revenue attainment goal, to achieve in the next few years, is to reach a few hundred million dollars in revenue in order to compete with Facebook and Google. The leadership team does a great job of frequently communicating this idea, but they fail hard to acknowledge in detail the actionable plan or product that will get Zeta there. In terms of revenue, I’d say that a large share of the revenue that Zeta has posted recently is generated from the revenue that was tied to the smaller tech companies that Zeta has acquired. Zeta tries to “build” on these existing relationships in the attempt to call these relationships their own. To me, it doesn’t seem like Zeta acquires many new clients due to their confusing and over-hyped product offerings in addition to having a team of sellers who, for the most part, don’t understand the products they are selling. With a large majority of sellers and account mangers incapable of understanding Zeta’s product offering and processes, much of the selling and heavy lifting comes from a smaller talented pool of employees within the Zeta organization. While Zeta does have a small share of bright employees, they are far and few between. Unfortunately for this small pool of talent, Zeta is hyper-focused on hitting their quarterly and yearly revenue goals, whether they get there or not. From my experience, and in my opinion, hitting these revenue goals comes at the cost of compensating their employees, especially retaining and awarding the smaller share of high performing employees. For those employees not actively contributing to revenue, I’ve seen their employment terminated, I’ve witnessed lay-offs in times when jobs are needed the most, and I’ve seen the bonus plan be restructuring and postponed to be paid out at a later time. Outside of the business itself, for a tech company that is trying to compete with the likes of Google and Facebook, their office is, to me, is laughable and the company culture in New York is, again to me, toxic, if not near non-existent. In terms of culture, Zeta is nowhere close to finding its identity. Zeta likes to say that they are working towards becoming one Zeta, but in reality, it feels like 5 different companies crammed into one office space. There isn’t much interaction between employees from different acquisitions, except for the few at the leadership level. Because there isn’t much interaction between the lower-level employees, which make up a larger share of the company, the company events, more often than not, seem more like a meet-and-greet and have low attendance because of the inherited awkwardness of these events. Zeta’s NY office has what seems to be a potentially non-functioning “A.I. Lab” that takes up a very large portion of the office and brings in no revenue. Meanwhile, they’ve acquired so many employees from recent acquisitions that there is not enough room in the office for everyone to sit comfortably. Do note that they’ve recently acquired more space on another floor of the building, but the temporary solution was cramming 2-4 people into small offices and conference rooms. With a new floor, these previous points should be neglected. There weren’t too many perks that the company offered. Every now and then, the company offers first-come-first serve tickets to some shows at MSG, there were exercise classes paid for by Zeta with limited openings, and lunch on Mondays were, in my opinion, beyond subpar for a “blossoming” tech company (.i.e. Pizza). All in all, I’d give Zeta two thumbs down. Please note, that this is my opinion on the company and is biased because of my negative experience during my time there.

Pros

There are some good people there trying to do good work but

Cons

Most of the good people have left (most not on their own). The CEO and President only care about themselves and the money they have.. they are completely unethical in everything they do and how they do it. They don’t care about people at all! They had good HR leader who cared but she left, had a leader in one of the businesses who cared, but he left. They drive all the good people out! Don’t waste your soul here.

Pros

1) Laid back culture with unlimited PTO and flexible work from home policy 2) Fully stocked kitchen and free lunch each week 3) You'll (for the most part) work with very smart, driven, and kind people 4) Work life balance is encouraged and respected (depending on which department you're in) 5) Great flexibility in being able to move around the company if you so choose.

Cons

1) Senior "Leadership" does not care about a single employee. It's all about the bottom line. To keep the quarterly revenue numbers looking good for investors and to save their bonuses, "leadership" lays off employees whenever necessary, which is frequently. Every single employee, no matter how talented or committed, is 100% expendable. Layoffs are normalized and occur multiple times a year. After a while, you realize Zeta really does not care about their employees, and for that matter clients, as the layoffs directly impact the quality of work Zeta can provide them and overextends remaining employees. Some of Zeta’s most talented and committed people have been tossed aside, and in the end it hurts no one but Zeta. Beyond that, when great people are laid off, it's not usually handled in a respectful way to that person or the team, which often further harms morale for remaining people. 2) Leadership is nearly 100% male. No women at the company seem to have a say in any major decisions about the company. It’s well-known there’s a big boys club mentality in the main corporate office. The co-founder/CEO was recently sued for harassment, though all other men at Zeta appear to be respectful of women. 3) Executive leadership often makes very big decisions about the whole company without getting any insight/advice from lower-level employees who are on the ground floor and really know what’s going on. As a result, some decisions are very bad for the company, for employees doing the actual work, and for clients. At least twice Zeta has laid off an entire department, only to immediately replace it with new people. 4) A common inside joke at the company is, "What does HR even DO?!?" This is usually in regards to employees having terrible healthcare, which can easily cost you $10K more a year than you'd pay at any other job in the same town. The joke is also in reference to Zeta having absolutely zero onboarding for any new hire. Every new employee has to fend for himself/herself to learn about the company and its products, or hope someone in their department takes it upon themselves to train him/her. 5) Company is very siloed due to frequent acquisitions. Leadership likes to run after and buy anything shiny. They are trying to break down the silos, but it remains to be seen if they will be successful.

Pros

Great and visionary CEO Free snacks

Cons

This review is specific for the Zeta Melville group of the company, whichhas a drastically different culture from the entire company. This group wasoriginally a small local company (MBS) which got bought off by largercompanies, over and over (e-dialog, ebay, zeta), however the culture has always remained the same. Typical small companyculture: there is just one boss at the top and everybody just tries to keep in happy, make him laugh, or merely just nod to him,whether its right or wrong. This group had some talent, but they were fired for going against the top boss. Naturally, the nodders were promoted to directors, sr. directors, solution heads, etc. The top boss interferes so much in solution/product development that nothing gets past the finish line. Hence, Account management team is unable offer great services to clients. Naturally, any innovative ideas are scrapped before they are born. The top boss instead of focusing on getting new clients, is just focused on cost cutting - in such a cheap fashion: a director has to do housekeeping, get junk coffee machines, move to cheaper, tight, pathetic office, etc. No wonder, this group is just a sinking ship! Unfortunately, instead of fixing the leak, they just make someone walk the plank (fire) at-least 1 every year. Apparently, this tactic has helped them maintain their yearly bonuses. Adding to the holes of the ship, at-least 1 client bails out each year. This is evident from the declining clients and no new client additions for this group. Ironically, the CEO of the company is such an amazing leader and a visionary! Always 10 years ahead of the time. His speeches are thought inspiring and motivating, unfortunately, it all goes down the drain when the business groups are silo'ed. In Summary, this group is just another Titanic, on the verge of sinking.