Mediavine Reviews

There was a time when this company genuinely felt special. Employees cared deeply about the mission, the publishers, and each other. People consistently went above and beyond because they believed in what they were building. Publisher churn was so rare it was handled by essentially one person, morale was high, and the culture was the reason many employees stayed long term. The turning point became noticeable after a major shift in revenue leadership. From there, the company slowly moved away from the people-first culture that fueled its rapid growth and toward a far more chaotic, numbers-driven environment.   Since then, there has been constant turnover, repeated reorganizations, loss of experienced employees, and a revolving door of leadership that created instability across teams. Many talented people who helped build the company either left or were pushed out, and the disconnect between leadership and frontline employees became impossible to ignore. What’s most disappointing is that this didn’t feel inevitable. Employees genuinely loved working here at one point. Watching the culture deteriorate in real time has been frustrating and honestly heartbreaking.

Where do I begin? There's just so many to list. - The ELT at this company is, putting it as nicely as possible, absolutely incompetent and amusingly unqualified for the positions they hold. The CEO is exceptionally clueless and has zero business running a pop-up lemonade stand let alone a company such as this. He has a proven track record of not understanding that the root cause of the company's woes are his decisions regarding the people he's placed on his ELT. The Head of Revenue was brought in to serve as a liaison between ad partners originally. Somehow, within an extremely short period of time, she was basically given the keys to the kingdom. She's been manipulating this spineless coward of a CEO at every step while collecting money and burning down everything in her path. - The company culture is a cesspool made up of lies, zero transparency, zero accountability, and backstabbing. Any decisions that are made by the ELT lack any insight into the departments, the products, the systems in place, and generally any vital context/research that would inform them of how unimaginably dunderheaded their decrees are. If one of their cockeyed schemes fails spectacularly, as virtually all of them do, the top never accepts responsibility for their failures, rather, the blame is deflected and absorbed by those on the lower rungs of the hierarchy ladder. - God help you if you disagree with anything that the leadership team thinks, requests, implements, values, or any other things they may hold dear. God. Help. You. Once you express any opinion to the contrary you might as well bid farewell to any potential upward mobility. - Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs. A huge round of layoffs happen, such as when the whole QA team was let go, and the ol' imbecile of a man-child playing make-believe CEO promises no more layoffs, and then, months later, proceeds to layoff even more people. What's most revealing is that, at the same time as the QA Department was atomized, he went and purchased a 17 million dollar home. Whether the two were related or not, who can say, but it just looks bad. Yes, this story was all over the internet about the mansion purchase; it can be easily found. - Every day felt like adorning yourself in your finest chainmail prior to jumping into work, only to be joyfully met face-to-face with an M1 Abrams tank gun firing infinitely at you all day. The stress was unbelievable. The expectations unrealistic. The requests unreasonable. Every project and deadline felt like it was put together in order to ensure failure from the team responsible for delivering it. Only a select few people were part of the Golden Clique who could do no wrong and whose opinions were valued as Gospel-truth. - If you are even thinking about applying here I implore you to not. Ever read that short-story "I have no Mouth, and I Must Scream"? It's a lot like that. If you haven't read it, read it. It's truly a fate worse than death.