Centro Reviews

Pros

Led by a founder CEO who is really passionate about the products, and one of the few executives I've seen that leads the company in a very wholesome way with a focus on happiness, giving, collaboration, and truly caring for our customers and making their life better.

Very smart and talented teams that collaborate well, and know how to produce kick-ass products while having fun.

Great work-life balance.

Advice to Management

You've built a great culture, so make sure to maintain this, as it helps attract the right folks that make this such a great place to be.

Pros

I have been at Centro for 3 years now and have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. Centro has an amazing work-life balance, benefits and colleagues. Everyone is so friendly and is always willing to lend a helping hand if you are ever in a bind. If someone leaves and goes to a typical "agency" company they always end up reaching back out a few months later expressing how they wish they had never left in the first place!

Pros

I'm not one to write reviews but given the recent negative comments by a few angry ex-employees of Centro being spewed, I feel the need to write about my experience. I left a few months ago after being there for over five years.

Hands down, Centro is the best company I've ever worked for.

90% of what I've read in the recent posts isn't close to being accurate of what's going on at the company. It seems like a few scorned, bad apples are looking to hurt the company for reasons no one understands. I promise if you poll the employees at Centro they will tell you it's an amazing company to work for. Leadership cares a lot about the employees and most of my best friends in life are people I met while working at Centro.

And, all of the negative discussion around Basis, Centro's newest platform is laughable. I saw the platform firsthand and also saw it implemented at the company and the first few customers.

I've seen a lot of platforms in the advertising industry and nothing compares. Did it take them awhile to build it? Sure, but it's a massive platform -- much bigger than the leading industry DSPs. So of course it's going to take a long time and millions of dollars.

Spoiler alert to the haters: ALL big platforms take that long and that type of investment to build. Nothing new here. And the CEO deciding to remove the CTO and lead day-to-day management of the product and engineer organization was the smartest, and most effective, move he could've made a few years ago.

If you want to know what's really going on at Centro, just email anyone at the company and I'm sure they'd be willing to give you an honest, fair and unbiased assessment.

And I'm positive the super vast majority of them will say the same things I'm saying.

Advice to Management

Ignore the lies and criticisms on Glassdoor from people who don't work at the company anymore.

Stay focused on helping and improving the people at the company who love coming to work, who are committed to the cause, and who are committed to keeping Centro one of the best companies in the industry to work for.

Pros

As a long time employee of Centro, I am saddened by the recent reviews. Centro is a fantastic company that prides itself on putting employees first. I have never felt anything other than grateful for the opportunities I have been given here.

During my time, I have seen a lot of change. I started when the company was small. We grew rapidly. The industry grew rapidly. We were forced to adapt. I believe the leadership team evaluates each area of the company thoughtfully to ensure a successful future and I have full confidence in their abilities.

As an employee, experiencing change can difficult when we are not the ones driving it. I feel many decisions have been good, others questionable, a few terrible. When confronted with these situations, we are forced to decide: Do I ride the tide and see what happens? Do I leave gracefully? Do I throw others under the bus until my time is up? Or do I see an opportunity to make things better? I choose the latter. Most here do. The future is always hazy if we choose to ignore it.

It must also be said that I also have complete confidence in our HR/Talent & Development team. They go above and beyond to make everyone feel comfortable and address issues when they arise. They always treat me with respect and work hard to understand my concerns and resolve conflicts if necessary.

Centro also offers an excellent benefits package, competitive salary, and surrounds you with a lot of smart people. I am able to provide a good life for my family and spend time with them. I also like the people I work with. It can't get much better than that.

Advice to Management

You are not superheros. You cannot be everything to everyone. Instill a sense of confidence and trust in those you manage and communicate openly and honestly with them often.

Pros

I really enjoyed my time at Centro. There were ups and downs just as you’d find at any organization but I ultimately feel very proud of the projects and teams I contributed to. I felt trusted in my role and encouraged to take chances. Expectations were high, the problems challenging, and things didn’t always work out but we worked hard to learn from our failures and build amazing products.

The people we supported through our products were incredible. Centro is full of engaged, smart, fun-loving employees who are good at what they do. Of course there are some at all levels of the org chart that don’t measure up or share the same values. At times, Centro has done a good job of making changes when necessary and other times they’ve been slower than ideal. But Centro hasn’t cornered the market on that situation. Every company has this issue because, well...people.

Centro’s culture and structure certainly evolved over time, as it should. Standing still in business isn’t an option. Market shifts, competitive changes, company growth...all necessitate change. Has it been a perfect evolution? Not always. But I appreciated the willingness to try and adapt regardless of whether management got it right every time.

I also appreciated Centro’s willingness to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to benefits. Centro has made great effort to invest in the benefits and perks it offers employees. Few companies support their employees like Centro does in this regard and that is no small gesture.

For me, Centro was what I made of it. If I pitched an idea, more often than not I was given the green light to do it. I personally grew a ton at Centro and was able to progress in my career unlike many of the places I had been previously. This was in part due to the timing of my employment and Centro’s stage of growth when I joined. But it was also largely due to the great people I had the pleasure of working with/for and the amazing team I got to manage.

Advice to Management

“You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.”

But there’s probably a kernel of truth to both.

Pros

The company is working hard at providing career growth for hard working, positive individuals. I've had opportunities here to grow and expand my role, as well as sought out and groomed for a promotion. Centro is a company that focuses on their employees first, rewards talented people with more responsibility, and has a caring HR and leadership team that makes themselves available for coaching, mentoring, and training. Yes you have to be proactive in your own growth, but if you are, this is a great place to start and to grow your career. Additionally, the office space in Chicago is beautiful, most of the people here are warm and friendly, and that makes coming into work more enjoyable than not. Also, there is a great sense of community here and a feeling that the people you work with are in the trenches with you helping make things happen. There are cool people here that I hang out with both inside and outside of work.

Advice to Management

Stop tolerating whiners. Kindly show them the door please. Get more rigid with your interview processes so miserable folks don't even make it through the first round of interviews, let alone work here. Hire happy individuals who would likely thrive in any company environment, and will come in with an attitude to improve the company rather than expect the company to improve them.
Revisit the bonus policy so there are opportunities for folks working hard to receive partial bonuses rather than no bonus when the company misses it's revenue goals.

Pros

Good work-life balance; decent perks

Pros

- The Basis Platform is an excellent product that will help streamline agency day to day tasks
- Good work / life balance
- Tons of different clients to learn about new KPIs, verticals, and publishers in the digital space

Advice to Management

Tighten up the hiring process. Many new hires came into positions that they were not ready for and put additional work on team members that were already over worked. Look for an understanding of digital media as a whole when hiring on the services side rather than just a culture fit, a good balance of both will lead to success

Pros

The people at Centro are the best people I've ever worked with. It's a caring environment where others go out of their way to help each other.

It's a place where you feel the CEO, and leadership team, truly cares about everyone who works here and they do the best they can to create a positive and uplifting environment.

A pro, that can also be a con, is that Centro has a big vision. It's great to have a big vision but is it possible the vision is too big?

We just launched a brand new platform (Basis) at the end of 2017. It's a bigger platform than what our customers are used to. Early signs are promising. It has everyone feeling a lot more pumped up and excited than they've been in the past couple of years.

Advice to Management

We understand how big the vision is but we have a hard time articulating it as well as understanding how we're going to get from where we're at to where the vision leads us. Management should do a better job of helping us understand how we plan on going from here to there and what it means to all of us.

Additionally, I think more transparency to how goals are set and ensuring there is a plan for everyone to get 100% of their bonuses paid is important.

Pros

- super nice friendly colleagues
- everyone is respectable and kind
- open culture, you can go directly and talk to anyone in the office, even your boss's boss
- great culture in the office
- amazing minds to work with and learn from

Advice to Management

- keep doing what you are doing, change is essential and you are on the right path