Pros
iSpot pays its sales team very well especially if you are favored by senior leadership but this is not true of teams like data or editorial. The editorial team only makes a few dollars over minimum wage. The office is conveniently located on the Eastside and has lots of random stores that you wouldn't intentionally plan to visit, like the Party Store and Hallmark, Uncle's Games, a small library, but turn out to be useful when you want to run errands after work. iSpot is actively updating the building to be more modern and have more amenities (like a shower for bike commuters), a lobby and lunch tables so you don't have to eat at your desk. There are things like bagels on Wednesday and typically soda, talking rain, juices, coffee and snacks like chips and candy in the kitchen. The product, despite some data quality issues and the metric changing often, has the potential to revolutionize the TV advertise industry. The CEO has claimed there are no direct competitors, and that the vast majority of companies speaking as competitors of iSpot are just noise.
Cons
There are severe problems at iSpot, such as casual sexism and an us vs them mentality created by the Senior Leadership team. There have been multiple woman who have had negative, inappropriate experiences with higher-ranking male employees. These experiences were widely known throughout the company, yet no action was taken by HR or the leadership team. When the leadership team was questioned about sexism, the tone of the conversation changed to defensive and aggressive and the conversation was quickly shut down. It’s reassuring to see iSpot is hiring women VPs and starting a professional group for women, because the previous senior-most women were notorious for getting their promotions for threatening to quit and routinely threw other women under the bus in order to look more favorable in front of the, at the time, all male senior leadership. Communication is severely lacking. One girl that used to work there would always say she had to talk in timestamps since things changed so frequently and since the majority of the information was passed through a game of telephone, no one knew what the true story was. This is especially frustrating since things are constantly changing and no one is held accountable. This also led to more senior team members sacrificing more junior team members in front of the Leadership team. In the last 9 months, we’ve had two separate employee surveys but the feedback is not taken to heart. The CEO pulls out the points that that are already hitting (stocked kitchen, updating the office) but the true issues like gender, diversity and pay inequality are brushed under the rug and never addressed. Managers have either outlasted everyone else in their department and got promoted due to longevity, despite not actually being skilled at people management or the tasks they are to manage, or have expressed desire to quit and therefore got promoted. An outside management training program is much needed here. If you are looking for someone to help you grow your role, skill set, or stake in the company, you won’t find that at iSpot. No one will advocate for you and managerial input, oversight, or encouragement is non-existent. Since no one knows how to be a true manager there, you will need to forget the experience that got you hired and adapt to whatever selling, account management, engineering style the lead on that team prefers. There is no room for criticism or areas to suggest process improvements. Say goodbye to work/life balance. You will be expected to be on at all times. Whether that is 6am or 11pm. The perk of having an inflated salary, shower on premise, BBQ occasionally for lunch in the summer, booze on premise, and bagels didn't overcome the raging sexism, lack if career opportunities......unless your MO is to the CEO and threatening to quit to get a title bump. If you don't care about company culture or the well-being or treatment of those around you and you have an aged out frat-boy vibe, apply now! You’ll do great! If you have integrity and are mildly skilled, skip iSpot. There are hundreds of other tech companies in the Seattle area that offer better work/life balance, culture, growth potential and in some cases, pay.
