|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Jan 22nd, 2021 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
Mumbai
|
|
Review
|
|
Good company good work ethics
|
Few things are bad they should improve
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
0.0
|
3.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
0.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
PART_TIME
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Dec 13th, 2017 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
|
|
So much possibility
|
|
Working with smart motivated people.
The platform has evolved into a real game changer.
Free lunch.
Unlimited PTO
Flexible WFH days.
|
Office space is getting a bit tight.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
Needs more marketing to drive awareness to our awesome platform.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
0.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Oct 31st, 2017 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
San Francisco, CA
|
|
Great team, outstanding benefits for a mid-size startup
|
|
Great perks, great people. Top-notch health insurance & catered meals. Lots of autonomy.
|
Unfair perks given to engineering team over others, e.g. remote working.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
Great work!
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Apr 28th, 2017 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
Product Specialist
|
|
|
Amazing Opportunity and Job Experience
|
|
It's a very flat company. As a result any one has the ability to speak upwards and voice their opinions and be heard.
Get to work with every single team in the company to align interests and learn new skills
Managers are all very receptive to feedback
Ability to Travel
Coworkers are awesome. Every one has a vested interest in helping one another to make the company successful
Co founders are extremely accessible and down to earth
Hard work is compensated with cool perks and opportunity for more responsibility
Transparency- there are weekly optional all hands meetings updating on the direction of the company.
Quarterly social events
Free snacks and a generous travel budget
|
Sometimes the work life balance is a bit off, and there are late nights
Other offices get a per diem daily lunch budget or catering. Remote workers do not.
compensation is a little low compared to other places, especially for doing more work/responsibility
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
3.0
|
5.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
Keep doing your thing! I know this company is going to great things.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
Yes
|
|
1.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Feb 23rd, 2016 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
Bellevue, WA
|
|
PaperG has etched many positives in my memory.
|
|
The company is still pretty startup-y, considering its inception. Work space is set up to maximize collaboration — open desk layout, whiteboards for walls, free things to munch on, etc. In the same sense, you can also take WFH days to avoid the commute, single-task in the zone, or whatever. You are allowed other amenities such as:
- Paid technical conferences
- Monthly Orca / Uber credits
- Free learning material (books, videos, etc)
- Periodic company celebrations!
- …
On a typical day, on feature team, there’s X series of items to work on. The proper time of those tasks have usually been allocated during a sprint planning. However, in some teams you just follow the “get things done” attitude. Yes, things do move swiftly and in many cases, you may be disrupted to extinguish fires. That’s how the ball rolls. Recently there have been multiple initiatives sprouted to improve in reducing technical debt (kudos to that).
Of the companies I’ve worked for, PaperG has been the flattest. Anyone with an interest, can join any team, or initiate any project they chose. As a result of this, you have many fresh things going on at a given moment. Though, I would suggest knowing thyself before biting off too much, it can become incredibly scattering and result in producing sub-par work. On the teams I’ve worked for, the people didn’t have an over entitled sense of self or ego issues.
By the way, we have 2 offices, this is speaking for the engineering side of things. The other office in San Francisco is primarily client facing, though you can visit freely on a whim.
|
The company produces products too fast, often at the result of lackluster features getting shipped. This creates headaches affecting nearly everyone upstream and downstream. Recently there has been public acknowledgement of this at our monthly TGIF. This gets to the next point.
Process is flimsy. You are expected to do what is necessary to get things done. If guidelines exist, you may find conflicting material elsewhere which contradicts or opposes it. In essence, at the micro level each feature team operates slightly differently. At the macro level, there have been various workflow changes which may not get fully ratified. Giving everyone the same pill will not be the solution but there should be measures to making workflow less mentally intensive.
Lastly, depending on what you're doing, the work lacks excitement. :(
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
|
|
1.0
|
5.0
|
2.0
|
4.0
|
5.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
Keep an ear to the ground on employees content, and discontent.
Drive the companies important bets and and mission statements top-down -- make sure everyone understands the why's and what's of the impact.
Keep people inspired & recruit active, passionate people.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Dec 8th, 2015 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
Account Manager
|
San Francisco, CA
|
|
Great!
|
|
Enjoyed working there, great perks, good people, good environment. Really enjoyed their learning culture, books and learning lunches and such
|
Sometimes a little dull but hey, that's just work. Can't complain about work!
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
4.0
|
3.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Aug 17th, 2015 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
|
|
Great startup
|
|
Work closely with team members, free lunches, Flexible schedule
|
No transparency, little room for growth, low salary
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
3.0
|
4.0
|
3.0
|
2.0
|
2.0
|
2.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
If you want/expect employees to grow personally and professionally, you need to provide a support system.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
0.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Aug 4th, 2015 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
Software Engineer
|
Seattle, WA
|
|
Pros and Cons, like everywhere else
|
|
I really enjoyed working at PaperG. It was my first job out of college, and I learned a whole lot. Everyone I met at the company was intelligent, there wasn't anyone working at the time of my resignation that I thought shouldn't be there.
The atmosphere in the office is very laid back. You can set your own hours, and working from home is an option as well, if you clear it with your manager. The office has a ping pong table and a Wii U with smash brothers, two of my favorite games. There was never a problem with taking a break from work to relax and play some games, or even just chat around the office. I considered everyone I worked with to be more than just a coworker, it really felt like we were all friends. The atmosphere in the office was truly great, I can't say enough here how much I enjoyed it.
The company also sponsors your lunch, they give you a credit card that you can spend up to a certain amount every day. The amount covers pretty much everything in the area. There are also a ton of snacks in the kitchen, and you can message the hiring manager for whatever you wanted and she would get it for you. We also had a kegorator, but that was slightly neglected, though only out of our own lazyness, management had no problem paying for fresh kegs or cleaning supplies when we asked.
The work is pretty great to. I felt free to choose what I wanted to work on. Obviously, it still is work, and sometimes there are things you have to do that aren't that interesting, but on the whole I felt I got to choose my own destiny. Like most start ups, I imagine, there is plenty to work on, so if you have an interest you can pretty much just jump into it. Maybe some of the teams have a bit more top down direction, but I can't speak to that.
However, you really do need to pick something and jump on it. You might have some difficulty if your not a self starter, or don't want to teach yourself how to do things. new Like I said, there's a lot to do, and sometimes I would have liked a bit more direction, especially when I first joined the company. Everyone is pretty helpful though, and willing to help explain something to you if you ask. There are a lot of interesting problems to solve in the advertising space, and since its also a relatively small company there are lots of big picture projects to work on, like logging and monitoring. If your motivated you can learn a whole lot here and have a big impact.
|
I just want to note that I wrote I lot here for the "Cons" section. I remember all these things and wanted to put them here because I actually care. If I didn't care I wouldn't have bothered to write all this out. I hope that someone from the company sees this and these problems start getting resolved. PaperG really is a good place to work and I think the company can succeed. I really enjoyed my time at PaperG, I loved the office atmosphere and the people. I really did love the job. That said:
The number one reason I quit was that the office is located in Bellevue, and I live in Seattle. I'm not willing to live in Bellevue and my commute was often over 2 and a half ours total with traffic. If the office was located in Seattle, or the bus routes didn't completely suck, I could have ignored all the other issues below this point.
The second reason I quit was salary. PaperG pretty heavily underpays a lot of its employees, from my own perspective and from some people I've talked to. This is really too bad. My salary at the time of giving my resignation was close to 20% below the average for people of my position in Seattle according to a google search for "Software Engineer 1 Salary, Seattle". You get what you pay for, at PaperG there were many times where we wanted to hit a deadline, but it clearly wasn't going to happen unless I put in extra work. Had I been paid more, I would have been willing to put in the hours to make it happen, but instead I simply insisted we extend the deadline. Another unfortunate part of this is that when I was hired, the company made a big deal about how I wouldn't have to ask for raises, that talent would be rewarded etc. This was part of why I was willing to accept a below average salary, with the assumption that I would prove myself and be brought up to par. This didn't happen at all. Obviously PaperG is a business, and no business is out looking for ways to increase cost, but since it was a big part of the recruiting pitch it was a real let down that it was complete lip service.
Other thoughts:
There seems to be a negative outlook on the product. I think this in part stems from the fact that a major release of our flagship product was not well received by our customers. People seemed more likely to make fun of our product than to be excited it. While it is cool that the culture is laid back enough to make those jokes, its a bit disheartening when your making jokes instead of being proud about the thing your working on 8 hours a day. For me, this stemmed from a major release of our product back in fall last year. From what I heard, the product was simply not what our customers wanted. Now, I worked on mostly back-end stuff during my tenure at PaperG, so I wasn't completely connected with the feedback about our product, so maybe the release went fine, and was a success. I honestly don't know, and that to me is a huge problem. I only know the rumors that I heard, and they weren't positive. Management never stepped in and addressed these concerns. These were more than just rumors, people were openly talking about the failure of this release in the office. While I'm sure there was discussion behind closed doors about what happened and how to prevent it, this was never even acknowledged by management as far as I know. At a small company like this, I'm an employee but I'm also a stakeholder. A complete failure of a new version of our product (or even just rumors about it) should be either squashed or addressed head on. No one stepped up to the plate and said: "here's what happened, here's what went wrong, here's how were fixing it," or "Lets celebrate the success of our latest product, look at the numbers we are doing!" There is no way management didn't know what was being said. It really shakes my confidence in the company when these rumors are never even addressed.
The communication between the business folks and the engineers is almost non-existent, at least it was for me anyway. At the time that I quit, we had several products being worked on, and I couldn't have told you what the differences were between them, or what unique problem each one was trying to solve, or why we needed various versions to accomplish that. Some people are happy to just put their time in and leave, but not me, and I got the sense that most of the people at the Seattle office weren't either. I would have really liked to be clued in to the big picture. I understand if my input wouldn't carry much weight, since I am still a relatively new software engineer, but I would still like to know whats going on, at least at a high level. Everyone I met at PaperG was very smart, in my mind that was a huge amount of untapped potential.
In the same vein, the apparent death of flash is a huge win for PaperG, as they are already making HTML5 ads. But you wouldn't have any idea. I was only told this during my exit interview.
Another thing that is a real negative is the split offices. It seems to me that most real communication gets done around the water cooler, or while out to lunch, through unofficial channels. But that can't happen as easily when half the people are in another state. At this point, I'm not sure what they can do to change it, but I view it as a real hindrance to progress. Communication is pretty difficult when your not face to face. Which brings me to my next point: conference calls. when we switched offices, there was talk of getting TV's in the conference rooms dedicated to video conferencing with the San Francisco office. This never happened. It was known that people were having issues with getting reliable conference calls to work. Yet nothing was done. And I mean nothing! I had to wire up the ethernet port in the conference room to the switch myself to get ethernet so I could get a stable conference call going. Why is there not a subscription service that we have to ensure call quality? Why are we forced to use the free (and sadly somewhat unreliable) google hangouts for business critical discussions?
More on the move: the internet sucked for weeks after moving. It took forever to get the WiFi stable. This seems like the type of thing you want to have ironed out before you start putting people in an office. And when we were still having problems a week later, just hire someone to fix it! The people PaperG hires are software engineers, not network technicians. Don't expect your software engineer employees to configure the wireless, or let them try and when its not working at least get them some help. Just hire a specialist to spend a day setting it up. Yes it costs money but the weeks of poor productivity from internet issues is surely more expensive, and really disappointing. Its 2015 and we are a technology company without stable WiFi in the office? Come on.
I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that the management needs to up their game.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
0.0
|
NEUTRAL
|
-1.0
|
DISAPPROVE
|
9.0
|
4.0
|
5.0
|
3.0
|
4.0
|
2.0
|
2.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
It seems like there are a lot of positive things happening. The demo in the last all hands was really great, please keep that up. Codifying the processes on github is a really great idea, keep expanding on that.
I think the biggest problem facing PaperG is the poor communication between the business and engineering groups. Since its probably too late to combine the offices, there needs to be specific mechanisms for sharing information. I'm talking presentations and company events, not just emails. The company really needs to expend intentional effort to facilitate this, it clearly isn't happening on its own.
As silly as this sounds, I'd like to see a dedicated "cheerleader," someone who is a bit technical so they can help celebrate the engineering wins that are going on, but also business savvy, and can understand and promote the progress on the business side. It would be really great if this person could also specifically (as in, part of their job description) be the guy (or girl) an engineer or business person can go to to ask questions about the company strategy, vision, technical direction, whatever. The company really needs to do a better job promoting its vision. Maybe this can be folded into an already existing role.
Another option would be to have more frequent traveling between the offices. I'm certain that having engineering and business on a more personal basis would result in a ton of new ideas being generated. And when there are travelers, there should be specific, company sponsored events for socializing. Frequent company happy hours (or something), during office hours so people will actually attend, would do a lot to bring people together. I can't make meet new people within the company over hipchat.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
May 7th, 2015 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
|
|
Amazing for career growth, impact, and mentorship
|
|
PaperG has a culture that constantly encourages employees to be proactive and have their voices heard. The company is growing quickly, but the leadership's ears are always on the ground listening for feedback, making sure that employees feel valued.
Every person in the company can have a large amount of influence, no matter what role. At PaperG, you can learn an impressive amount about startups and ad tech very quickly. And if you work hard and have good working relationships with your peers, you will get recognized and enjoy coming into the office every day.
Coming to PaperG was the best move of my career thus far. Having come to PaperG from a really big company, the value is really apparent. Not only did I get fantastic mentorship from the C-level execs (especially the CEO and COO), but also I feel that I'm in a vastly better place in my career now than I was only 2 years ago. PaperG really cares about employee development.
|
If you are not a self-starter, this is not the place for you. It's important to come to PaperG (or any fast-growing start-up, really) with an enterprising, ambitious, and optimistic attitude.
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
POSITIVE
|
1.0
|
APPROVE
|
0.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
5.0
|
4.0
|
5.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
To echo another review, I really respect and appreciate the fact that PaperG is making a real effort to reward hard-working employees to an increasingly large extent. It's great for morale.
|
0.0
|
[]
|
REGULAR
|
No
|
No
|
|
2.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|
|
private:paperg-3
|
https://www.glassdoor.com?employer_id=382909
|
Feb 28th, 2015 12:00AM
|
Open
|
Open
|
Thunder
|
|
|
|
Hardworking ICs, questionable leadership
|
|
Unlimited time off is definitely honored at PaperG. Free lunch and snacks.
|
Top priorities of leadership here DO NOT include dedication to shipping a quality product. The CEO had very little presence and seemingly minimal interest in engineering and product development. There is consistently a lack of transparency from the COO/CFO in a very intentional, extremely alarming way. This is a company that has already resorted to playing the game of catch-up that noninnovative companies do after becoming irrelevant.
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
-1.0
|
NEGATIVE
|
0.0
|
NO_OPINION
|
0.0
|
1.0
|
5.0
|
2.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
1.0
|
|
382909
|
Open
|
|
0.0
|
[]
|
|
No
|
No
|
|
0.0
|
|
|
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
Mar 29th, 2021 09:18PM
|
PaperG
|
|
|