1. Mostly B players work at this company. I'd say 10% are actually industry experts and most of that 10% leave. Highly inflated roles were given to very junior people given in 2013 after high turnover. B players don't like to hire or manage A players. It makes them feel threatened. So you start noticing the B players hire C players to keep them under control. Imagine trying to do your job well with a bunch of B & C players managing you or that you rely on.
2. High turnover creates a constant flow of bad energy. In both the NYC and the bay area office the pendulum swung back and forth from either a lot of finger pointing or on the other side of the spectrum just outright ignoring problems. People would leave if they were an A player. And B and C players would step in and threaten to leave to get raises since the A players caused resource constraints. (once again causing highly inflated roles to junior people).
3. India, offshore (basically outsourced) engineering. Never work for a company that uses offsite resources to this degree. This is a clear sign that the company is cheap. At one point, 1/2 of the company was in India, 150+. Now it is about 1/3. The cultural differences are astounding and made getting anything complete brutal. If your company wants to hire 4 people for the price of 1 in a country where they are order takers and not problem solvers (especially in engineering and product), you will notice a paralysis of product advancement. Hence why every other SSP has eclipsed Pubmatic.
4. Executive Team is missing the mark. CEO is inexperienced in the C-suite game. CEO's in the industry are lightyears ahead of him. A CEO of a company is part of the brand, part of the perspective, a evangelist and thought leader. This is not the case here. That's ok though, I guess some CEOs have to learn as they go. Thankfully he and his brother are the biggest investors otherwise I believe he'd have been pushed out long ago.
The President is a good evangelist and thought leader, however he is more of the face of Pubmatic than in touch with what goes on internally or with his employees. The CTO has created a product full of bandaids that he is the only person that knows the answer to, and sadly if he went missing, the entire product would go with him. HR could fix a lot of these issues, but she's in over her head. Another example of someone who is learning as she goes making many mistakes, sweeping major HR issues under the rug and running to executives with things that she should be keeping private.
5. Perks. What perks.
6. Pay. You'll have to fight tooth and nail just to be at parity with what you were making before.
