Carta Reviews

3.6

57% would recommend to a friend

(600 total reviews)

Henry Ward

54% approve of CEO

52% positive business outlook

Carta has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 600 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Carta employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finance industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

600 reviews
2.0
19 Sept 2019

Senior management is ineffective, uninspiring, and lack strategy

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you’re lucky, your core team will make your time here worth it. People are generally helpful (with the exception of certain individuals) and want to give others the benefit of the doubt Depending on your location, the view from the office is great Most office manager staff / receptionists are a godsend

Cons

While Henry (CEO) does not lack for vision, his current staff of executives run the gamut of highly skilled if anti-social / political to having no presence & ability to execute. Teams are often baffled by decisions top-down or completely blindsided by them with little to no communication. It’s unclear what some VPs do or how they create value for their teams, months into their tenure. Useless meetings run amok so they can seem “busy” but no real decisions are made. Every quarter Carta struggles with OKRs, says it’ll be addressed but lacks follow through. There is no focus on certain teams, resulting in a feature factory with no cohesive strategy. The teams that do well will sometimes have their thunder stolen by executives who want the limelight. Politics is rampant at mid to senior management levels, impacting moral at HQ (SF) and west coast offices. In fact, it’s known that the closer you are to SF, the lower your satisfaction as an employee... because of proximity to executives and their obvious power struggles. Certain populations of Carta employees want to see their team and the overall company do well but the lack of focus and culpability for leadership saps motivation. Even the most driven person burns out within a year. This is not a place for those who have core values and expect decent leadership.

3.0
27 June 2019

The conundrum of Carta

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

On paper, Carta's the type of company you want to love. * The numbers are great from a SaaS perspective. * The headcount is growing, and the people are intelligent and show every day that they want to be here. * The product looks good, works well (generally), and everyone you know uses it, so you don't have to spend much time at social gatherings describing what your company does. * It's a technical product with a technical focus - and to be clear, it means that to do this job well you have to REALLY want to learn everything there is about equity. And if that sounds good to you, you're joining a great team. For the CEO: * Absolutely a mad genius, relatively intelligent, and will question you in the way that challenges you as a contributor and moves you forward, and you have to respect him for the community he's built. * I think he might have a good sense of humor but it's questionable, I think it just depends on the day.

Cons

What I have to say for the con's isn't meant to be directed at any of the employees who work endless hours and truly believe in the company's mission. It's just so unfortunate because, again, the people are motivating and inspiring and many of them are scared of questioning the behavior and decisions of others for fear of retaliation. If you're reading this in prep for an interview, I suggest asking to speak to several mid-level employees from other teams as part of the process on top of whoever they bring in. * It's an equity company that paints a picture of giving respectable amounts of stock options to their employee base. Yes, I've read all the blog posts, including the most recent from Nolan (the head of ppl) and understand option pools (thanks Carta). I'll leave it at that. * The bureaucracy is so thick that I don't think a steak knife could penetrate it. If you wanted to experience a real-life Game of Thrones, be prepared to come with popcorn. On this note, you can't trust anyone at the top, with the exception of a few like the CFO and head of marketing, and that's because they're just trying to claim as much land as possible. The worst comes straight out of the People and Legal teams for the most part, which is baffling and terrifying for a company moving in a regulated direction. * The SEC will come knocking, and it's going to be a day of reckoning for the whole operation when it does. * If you're doing a poor job, you're not actually going to get told that you've done or are doing something wrong. * They change your title, team, and manager so often that it gives you whiplash and doesn't actually support career trajectory once you leave the company. I've heard this from former employees, and it makes sense as to why. Now for the CEO. * On a Monday he says that the company is headed from Europe to America to break new ground, but then by Thursday he feels like taking a shortcut through Africa so you better be prepared to change the direction of the ship without much other than a "feeling" and it'll come with some sharp barking along the way. * He's such a volatile individual that I'm convinced that Silicon Valley has a fetish for sociopaths and the board is keeping him around for amusement and steady, growing numbers while he gets puppeted around by his strategy officer. Speaking of, that guy is a walking conflict of interest in himself and the whole company is skeptical because of it.

1.0
16 Oct 2020

Sales

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great co workers, great benefits, decent pay

Cons

C level and mid Management are 2 face liars Carta used Covid as an excuse to lay off 162 people (including me) because they “were being affected by the virus and couldn’t sustain all employees”. So with “heavy” hearts they made the “tuff” decision to lay off 20% of their work force. When they had over 3 years of runway in the bank if they kept everything as is. In fact they over hired too quickly and Carta didn’t think we fit the culture going forward. They then closed another $200 million series D funding... so they weren’t strapped for cash whatsoever. We were all told we would be notified and sought after to fill job openings when they were ready to hire again. This was a blatant lie. Not only were we not notified, we were turned down with canned HR emails saying our qualifications didn’t meet what they were looking for... someone who knew their product inside and out, knew how to attain quota etc... they would rather hire someone new to retrain and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to onboard them. Wouldn’t recommend if you don’t like being back stabbed.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 600 Reviews

Glassdoor has 712 Carta reviews submitted anonymously by Carta employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Carta is right for you.