Cliques, bullies, unequal pay for women, no HR - Anonymous employee The Trade Desk Employee Review

1.0
Feb 21, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good benefits, stock, healthcare, global company

Cons

Extremely clique Horrible HR Mistreatment of employees Incompetent leadership The Trade Desk can be really good for some people, and really bad for others, depending on how you play the game. In most offices, there is a clique that runs the office, and if you get in with them you’re golden. TTD hides the cliqueness by calling it ‘culture.’ If you’re part of it you’ll be given promotions, HR complaints lodged against you will be ignored, and you won’t have to work hard. There are some truly evil people protected by these groups, and I’ve seen many people in my office bullied by them. If you aren’t part of that group, your life can be absolute hell. It’s high school all over again, except you’re financially punished for it because you’ll miss out on clients/career opportunities by not being friends with these people. HR is tiny and doesn’t even have people in most offices. There are too many people that have gone to HR with complaints of things that are blatantly illegal or horribly wrong, and HR just tries to shut them up and they don’t do anything. If they go to your managers, they just try to shut them up and advise them that the best way to get ahead is to feign happiness. There a absolutely miserable people here just trying to smile to get that next promotion. Women aren’t treated equally. The CEO essentially acknowledge that pay is unequal across the company last year and that they don’t have a plan of fixing it. A lot of managers were given their jobs because they got here early, or were friends with the right people. This goes all the way up to the top where there are some people that everyone knows are incompetent, but are kept around for cultural aspects, when in reality they just bully people in their own offices and don’t do work.

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5.0
Apr 9, 2026
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Pros

People are really nice here, willing to help

Cons

The company has expanded so fast that there are some orgs problem

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3.0
May 11, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good working environment and perks - good pay (bad now due to depressed stock)

Cons

The company's leadership and talent selection mechanism is pretty bad. The performance management system has literally two rating (meet / doesnt meet) - how do you identify who to promote and mentor with two ratings? there are no growth paths, objectives, etc to guide anyone career - seems like everyone works for one persons unstructured strategy. People get elevated and recruited using a haphazard mechanisms and these recruits specially at higher levels have no way of understanding talent or grooming one. Hence the company struggles to compete in a space where the worlds best organizations compete (Google, Amazon, Meta, etc.). They hire from top places but just getting a bunch of top players doesnt make a high performing team - you also need the team structure, growth paths and coaching that leads players to win. This company will keep loosing its A players - and soon may struggle to survive if things dont change.

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