Most ungrateful company I've ever worked for - Anonymous employee Criteo Employee Review

3.0
Sep 19, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Fantastic technology and constant innovation which helps the company to deliver phenomenal growth year on year. Smart colleagues and smart senior leadership. Once a year a Global company event in France where all the company's employees meet and have fun - very few companies can afford it.

Cons

Company is obsessed with making money but forgot that it's not the algorithm that brings the money but the people who work for the company, whether its developers, sales, account strategists or marketing. Salaries are below market just because many want to work in the company. Because of the low salaries the retention rate is low. Poor middle-management - you can be the best employee consistently but the moment you make one small mistake, you are crucified by the managers. Positive feedbacks from managers are non-existent and there is a culture of bullying and intimidation which originates in the fact that many of the managers have no management experience or skills. Any constructive feedbacks and ideas that employees try to give are immediately interpreted as: 1. a challenge on manager's authority or as: 2. criticism of company. Promotions: internal promotions can be great only when the right candidates are chosen. Too often, someone gets promoted just because he has been certain time at the company although it's clear that person isn't suitable for managerial position (company compromises on quality of management because of its rapid growth) or sometimes there is no structural need for additional managerial role. You can be the best employee in your team but if your manager don't like you personally, you can forget about promotion. There are rules in terms of internal mobility however they are not applied consistently (if senior management likes you, these rules will be bent). Workload: Sales managers have to be involved from signing an advertiser through integration process and launch (they spend more time on non-sales activities). Account strategists have a huge portfolio of accounts which they can't manage so they tend to really focus on bigger accounts and ignore the rest. Technical engineers have too many integrations to look after and have the worst work-life balance in the company. Micro-management: there is clearly no trust between managers and teams, as the amount of reporting you need to do is ridiculous and is done over multiple systems which creates confusion and duplicity. Too much red tape and too much time is spent on meetings and trainings (on a regular week you will waste 8 hours on such meetings).

Explore other reviews about Criteo

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Great environment, great people to work with

Cons

Need to go back to office

avatar
Criteo Response
5d
We're thrilled to receive such positive feedback and to know that you've found a place where you can grow and thrive at Criteo. Thank you for sharing and for your trust all these years. It's great to have you on the team!
2.0
Jan 31, 2026
Recommend
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart, hardworking people at the individual contributor level (many of whom are now gone). Little micro-managing, but that’s because everyone’s bandwidth is near 0

Cons

Post–new CEO, the company has descended into complete chaos. There is no transparency around decisions that impact teams and roles. There have been consistent strategy, personnel, and supplier changes with no explanation, accountability, or follow-through. Cons, continued: Employee input and performance do not matter. Decisions feel driven by appeasing BoD and optics rather than results, input and reality. The culture has become a corporate hellscape of: Endless reorganizations with no clear rationale, including layoffs with no reasoning Vague all-hands meetings that avoid real issues, even when directly asked A massive disconnect between the C-suite and day-to-day reality Eroded trust and growing position insecurity Middle managers incentivized to prioritize managing up & executive optics over team advocacy “Return to Office” policy put in place when promised a “Work from Anywhere” position, where the RTO policy differs across employees’ location Little to no growth opportunities despite high performance Under-market average compensation that was justified by locale, “Work from Anywhere”, and flexibility — which was recently rolled back A clear favoritism to those that “talk the talk” vs “performance with numbers”

10
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