Beats unemployment for sure - Senior Software Engineer Criteo Employee Review

2.0
14 Feb 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Criteo is tech focused and the engineers are the stars here. * The management is somewhat open to change * Company values diversity * OK compensation * Very good work life balance * Paid overtime * Varied tech stack (c#, java, scala, kotlin, python, ruby) so you'll find a match * OK place to start your career

Cons

Coming from a FAANG company due to family reasons, I was shocked at the diversity of engineer skills here. You can see one skilled and enthusiastic engineer, and a staff/senior engineer that shouldn't even be hired as an intern. Though rarely, I've also encountered people in high tech positions that don't speak English very well. It's a mixed bag. The company is very bureaucratic and slow; even small projects require several meetings in which some people's opinions matter more than others. The kickoff meetings are a joke, people just want to state things to sound smart and they block you in the process. The codebase is very low quality, there's no coding standard, and the high number of supported languages doesn't help. When a feature is replaced, the old code doesn't get deleted, the migrations don't get done to completion, and the code grows and grows over time, becoming more fragile at each iteration. Then you find yourself reading code that's not even used anymore, because it turns out that the code you're reading was there just to support one project that prevented some migration from going complete in 2018 and it was decommissioned in 2020, but no one bothered to clean it up. If you're coming from FAANG, don't make same the mistake I've made. Your skills won't be appreciated here and you'll struggle trying to be productive.

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Criteo Response
3y
Hi, my name is Maxime Brugidou, Engineering Director. Thank you for taking the time to share such detailed feedback. I am sorry to hear you are not making the most out of your experience with us though. We highly promote a bottom-up approach and open feedback culture, so we can fix problems as we go. We strongly encourage innovation internally, with initiatives such as 10% projects, or the Voyager program. Project management is an area of constant improvement, and we are determined to make processes quicker and smoother as we evolve. The Kick-off process, for instance, is constantly improving - there is even a guild dedicated to this process (with a healthy mix of ICs, leads, managers, TPMs, etc.) We also intend for the process to be largely asynchronous - most of the discussion should have already happened in Confluence before the meeting even takes place. If you feel the process is too slow, perhaps getting involved in the guild could be a smart way to help improve it. We are a large engineering organization, with a diverse codebase, and a mix of legacy along with new stacks that we have to maintain. We acknowledge that the quality may vary from one project to the other, as we must keep making pragmatic trade-offs. We do focus on cleaning and deleting old projects, and actively reducing debt across the organization. I can assure you this is something top management is aware of and supports. Our people come from all over the world, so I guess encountering various accents and speaking levels is part of the deal. We see diversity as a real strength, and we are proud of the hiring bar we work with to ensure we hire the best people around the globe. We are constantly challenging and improving our hiring and performance evaluation processes to hire and retain the best diverse engineers while remaining people-centric and providing growth opportunities.

Explore other reviews about Criteo

5.0
25 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work life balance, all young people.

Cons

Taking away perks that we have had for a long time. Eventually reach your cap as an IC.

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Criteo Response
2mo
We're glad to know you've had a positive experience with us all those years. Open feedback always helps us improve and move forward so thank you for sharing and for contributing to making Criteo such a special place to work.
1.0
26 Feb 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Earlier in my time at Criteo, the culture was a true strength. Teams were collaborative, capable, and invested in delivering value to clients. There are still incredibly smart, hardworking people across the organization when they are given the resources needed to deliver strong work.

Cons

Morale has declined significantly due to direction from upper leadership. Executive communications often feel scripted and disconnected from the realities teams are navigating. Employees are facing burnout, layoffs, no merit compensation growth, and increasing workloads without clear strategic guidance. Leadership layers have expanded in ways that create bottlenecks and slow decision making, while individual contributors lack clarity on priorities and long term direction. Internal mobility has been restricted, limiting opportunities for promotion or role movement at the same time compensation progression has been removed. Salary transparency was removed from internal and external role descriptions, which has impacted trust. Despite positive performance, cost discipline appears to disproportionately affect employees rather than being shared equitably across leadership levels. Additionally, a return to office policy has been implemented, including for employees originally hired as remote. This has added strain and uncertainty for teams.

9
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Criteo Response
3mo
Thank you for sharing such detailed feedback. Every decision we make is taken with our long-term organizational health in mind. From top leadership to individual contributors, we are all committed to building sustainable success for our company and the people in it. Making Criteo a place where everyone can grow is a shared priority, and that’s why we equally value vertical and horizontal career pathways. When it comes to individual recognition, our merit compensation processes are structured and similar across our entire organization to ensure maximum fairness and equity. Since Criteo's success is built on connections, we strongly encourage our teams to come together to boost innovation and collaboration at once. By blending office presence with flexible options, we keep trust at the core of our work approach since everyone remain empowered to manage their time, energy, and schedule the way they see fit. Open feedback helps us improve and move forward, so thank you for sharing yours!
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