Be careful - Back End Engineer Cadent Employee Review

2.0
3 Jan 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Flexible time off - Fellow coworkers are really great to work with. Great collaboration. - Stocked kitchen. Definitely would have gained a few pounds here if I kept on snacking. - Fun company events such as bowling and holiday parties - Nice office space. Nice view of Philly - Birthday gift cards and Winter Holiday bonus

Cons

- Incredibility top-down heavy. Non-management employees are rarely listened to. Sometimes we will have something planned out and then a last minute executive order will change everything without a clear explanation. There are times when other employees would show up to meetings uninvited, which is distracting and counter productive. There is too much micromanagement done by managers when things don't go as planned. There seems to be a lack of trust between workers and their managers. - Lack of transparency and direction. We spent months developing a product that users won't use because it doesn't fulfill their needs. The feedback loop between everyone needs to be tighter, but no one is really improving it. We will often be given deadlines that are impossible to meet. For example, we were once given a deadline for a feature due in ten days, but the workload required at least thirteen. Decisions that affect development are made without the team being aware. This leads to poorly designed contracts, data-flow, and UI. - Resource constraints. We are asked to do more with less. Databases keep running out of space, and we are expected to support old and new products on a timeline that isn't realistic. A lot of these problems are solvable if upper management slows down, takes a step back, and listens to the people who report to them. I feel as though upper management has an ego problem. - Hard workers who perform really well are not rewarded. There's little room to move up in the company unless a manager is promoted to a higher management role, or when someone quits. Hardworking people are underpaid despite how much they contribute. -Lack of company culture. Everyone is isolated in their own departments. There is lack of communication, understanding, and interaction across different departments. - Some of HR do not care about certain departments within the company. That's a bit contradictory according to company core values. One core value is, "Results Over Rules", which isn't enacted. It's more like, "Rules over results". Sometimes rules seem to be made up on the fly.

Explore other reviews about Cadent

5.0
4 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Hybrid, nice office, nice people, good work life balance

Cons

The promotion criteria were not clearly established.

1.0
22 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Only pro is the actual staff themselves. Employees care and it is the only reason Cadent is floating.

Cons

Management is deluded. Leadership recently told employees that if they even tried to ask for more money that they wouldn’t get it and if they’re not ok with that then they are cool with people leaving. Hence why so many amazing people left within the last few months. Raises were terrible, promotions were a dime a dozen. Now they’re demanding people to come into the office 4 days a week. Culture at the top is just one big group of people all saying yes to each other and not once taking employee satisfaction into the equation. There is 0 transparency from all parties. No rhyme or reason to why certain goals are so high (and unachievable). HR continues to send out these nonsense employee engagement surveys and not take a single thing into consideration. They just dance around the point with a lot of corporate jargon and employees never see tangible actions being taken. Middle managers are clueless as well. They have no say or even understanding about why certain things are the way they are. When you have an actual problem or need something to be addressed, they do not help in the slightest. When raises/promotions came out earlier this year they already were prepared for backlash from employees about how terrible they were and knew there was going to be employee drop off but management didn’t care. Cadent wants to move into a video-only direction when a majority of their business is built on standard programmatic display campaigns. No idea how that will pan out. Either way, don’t work here. All the smart and good people from AdTheorent and some of the OG Cadent folks have bailed cause it is a sinking ship.

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