Read the reviews before you consider joining this hot mess of a company - Avis employé Employé (anonyme) Rokt

Despite the positives, Rokt fails on so many levels to be a decent organization. The marketing materials tout it as a “great place to work”, with (staged) pictures of happy and smiling employees, fun offices with plant walls, dogs galore, and lots of nice events—yet after a couple of months when the honeymoon period is over, you start seeing the cracks (which are more like canyons), which you can fall into at a moment’s notice. The company has aggressive and unrealistic revenue and sales targets set at the top, and this cascades down to every level in the organization. The executive leadership team have ramped up the pressure on every person in the sales org to drive business and pursue ever higher targets—and this leads to paranoia, skittishness, impatience and, sometimes, aggressive and pushy behavior. Everyone is compelled to make clients launch faster with Rokt—and mention one single issue or delay (which is, of course, outside of your control), then you will be pounced on from all sides and have a proverbial gun held to your head to try and solve the issue immediately. There is an overall insecurity at Rokt—and employees are constantly covering their backsides to avoid the wrath of the powers that be. Management rule with fear and an iron fist, with their subordinates walking on eggshells around them, and almost everything (activities, calls, meetings, emails) is forensically recorded and analyzed in HubSpot and Gong, and scrutinized in detail by senior leadership. Folks working on launching deals (BD, Solutions and Operations) are hounded for regular updates on all channels and there are constant internal fire drills trying to pursue some newfangled technique or tactic (known as “Lightning Rods”), only for it to be cast into the fire or forgotten a couple of weeks later. Rokt is mercilessly cut-throat and if you don’t perform in your role, fail to hit your aggressive targets, or receive bad “feedback” from your peers, you are moved out or aside quicker than you can take your next breath. There are reorgs nearly every quarter, with ICs getting passed between managers at an alarming rate, whilst leadership jostle with each other to land grab, take over teams and pursue ever bigger remits. The weekly CEO report is often filled with people who have either been forced out for “performance” reasons, or who have simply thrown in the towel and moved to a company that is actually a nice place to work. The quarterly “anonymous” surveys via CultureAmp (which management hound you to fill out in excruciating detail) are never really acted on, and serve more to provide intel on senior leaders in the business, which is then presumably weaponized against them during the half-yearly performance review and calibration process if the results are not favorable. Internal promotions and career progression is done using the “career ladder”, which is extremely rigid and allows pretty much no scope to get a pay rise whilst staying within grade. The promotion criteria is murky at best, and Rokt really doesn’t look out for people’s career development—expect all the promises made during your offer process (fast promotion, more equity, more responsibility etc) to be reneged when you’re 6+ months in as you knock up against the “career ladder” and the nasty internal politics. The product itself leans more towards spammy and intrusive pop-up website advertisements (euphemistically called “placements”) for crappy unrelated third-party offers (free trials for subscription services, $20 off your first purchase, new credit card signups—that sort of thing) that actually detract from the overall checkout experience. Simple on the face of it—and the financial upside for partners hosting Rokt “placements” can be significant—but this drives an internal culture of aggressive upselling/pushing new “placements” for completely unrelated advertisers/offers (e.g. who really wants a trial Harry’s Shave Club offer after purchasing a cinema ticket?) that really serve to clutter up a website even more and frustrate customers just simply trying to buy something. Management is mostly composed of people who have stuck around at the company for a few years, have been promoted from IC positions and are essentially locked in with golden handcuffs due to the equity payout when the company eventually IPOs (read: when pigs fly in a frozen hell). Most have little to zero EQ, have no idea how to actually manage people and build a high-performing team, and work with a certain arrogance—taking the first part of one of Rokt’s supposed “values”, “DISAGREE then commit” quite literally. This mostly consists of sharp critique/openly calling people out in public forums for getting something wrong, not doing something correctly or forgetting some trivial thing, simultaneously demeaning you and the task you are trying to achieve in the process. The internal culture is incredibly cultish and it’s very hard to “fit in” as a new joiner to the company unless you drink the Kool-Aid and submit yourself to Rokt fully—or get in the leadership’s inner circle. Favoritism of certain employees is rife and it’s a well-known fact that you need to be either Australian or in with the right crowd to get ahead in this company. As a newcomer (especially if you don’t come from the adtech/martech space), you are treated practically like a moron and constantly spoken over, disagreed with, challenged or sternly corrected by the folks who have been there a while, which just makes you feel worthless and like you are not achieving anything in your role. Despite some things changing sometimes faster than you can blink, Rokt sometimes remains stubbornly rigid and unwilling to try new things out—and if you’re new or a recent joiner wanting to pursue new ideas, you have to literally scream to make your voice heard. The IPO is never reasonably going to happen (there is a running joke in the company that it’s going to be “next year”) and the executive leadership team gives fluffy, noncommittal responses when asked about it directly by employees. Your equity is really only worth the paper it is written on (which forms a substantial part of your overall compensation), thereby leaving Rokt to screw you over on the base pay and hold you hostage until the company eventually goes public in the forlorn hope of a big equity payout. For new starters, the equity really isn’t worth it given the minute difference between the price your equity gets granted at and the company’s valuation on paper. Rokt is a founder-led company, and everyone in the company reports to either Bruce or Elizabeth (who are married). There seems to be no independent scrutiny of executive decisions made internally and both of them fiddle constantly in the tiniest of details without understanding the broader context, whether it is related to product or the go-to-market/sales orgs. However, if you challenge either one of them (which they “encourage” you to do during the monthly all-hands meetings or on open company chat channels), then your time at Rokt is very much limited. This behavior leads to obsequious senior leadership swarming around them like flies trying to impress them and pursuing whimsical ideas to get in their good books and to remain in their inner circle. The CEO/CCOs dogged loathing of Slack (which is treated practically as a swear word internally) has meant that the company’s main communication channel (Google Chat) is a noisy mess where it is difficult to find information easily. Most of the companies’ internal systems do not talk to each other, or are stitched together with automation that falls apart regularly, and reporting is a hot mess, with key performance data scattered across different tools. Important information such as launch dates, deal updates and overall performance is therefore forever inaccurate/out of date or not replicated across systems. Never fear though, people will still hound and chase you in open forums for updates—at all hours of the day. So, if you’re a fan of working as part of a chaotic, skittish and overly paranoid startup, then Rokt is the place for you—but unfortunately for most people, it fails in so many respects to actually be a decent organization. The ever-quoted mantra from the CEO/CCO is that “it’s a scrappy startup”, but the behavior witnessed at Rokt is really something you’d expect from a seed-backed/Series A startup, not an established Series E business that is weighing up an IPO in the next couple of years (though don’t hold your breath). The huge number of open roles on their website gives off the sole impression the company is growing at rapid pace, but it also masks the fact that overall employee turnover is high—people join, see the company’s true colors, then either jump ship or are simply forced (“managed”) out. If you really value your well-being, dignity, career development and mental sanity, then don’t touch this place with a 10-foot pole. You’ll never feel like you’re doing meaningful work, and you’ll spend your days dodging bullets, struggling with the convoluted and garbage product that Rokt aggressively pushes on its partners and advertisers, and being paralyzed by the venomous internal culture full of back-stabbing, paranoia and micromanagement. Don’t let the glossy surface-level perks, the benefits or the supposed dream of working for a pre-IPO company fool you, nor the company’s supposed goal of “unleashing relevancy in e-commerce”, Rokt will suck the life out of you. Do yourself a favor, read the negative reviews on here and on other forums (e.g. Reddit) which echo very similar themes—and look elsewhere.