Zillow Reviews

Cons

Management not nice and on career path

Cons

Too much complaining from entitled co-workers..so many are just aren't focused on the work we are there to do but rather all of the SJW stuff happening.

Cons

I have nothing but positive things to say about this organization.

Cons

Small company that is just starting.

Cons

The work was not fun and grueling. Felt like the red-headed stepchild of company as we were not allowed to participate in most activities.

Cons

The first year in PAC was great. People had their complaints but I realized that every company had their office politics. However, as the company grew FAST-- things changed. Management changed and department moral declined. I would go to all hands meetings and Spencer and Amy would deeply inspire me. Then I would go back to a department that felt so separate from the rest of the company. We weren't included in many functions that the rest of the company participated in. I realize that business needs dictate scheduling but there is always balance. Management spent so much time trying to convince us that we were no different than any other department when they could have exercised humility and OWNED IT. WE WERE DIFFERENT and you know what? That is okay. All I ever wanted was for management to admit that. Also, I understand that mistakes are made in corporate environments. That does not frustrate me. What frustrated me was that genuine apologies were never made, only excuses. I'm fairly confident I will receive a response to this assuring me that "management did admit when they were wrong!" An apology is not "well, you know, possibly the messaging was not the most effective and we are looking into maybe changing this. However, the reason this happened is because we were in a time crunch and we were doing the best we could with the resources we had." An apology does not include excuses. It is simply, "We are sorry for our actions and we will strive to do better."
Thankfully, for my last bit of time at ZG-- my team lead kept me engaged. They are the reason I stayed and I am so grateful for their encouragement and effective leadership skills.
Additionally, leadership was constantly asking for honesty and feedback. So, in skip levels, occasionally, I would speak up. I learned quickly that this was not effective. Generally, the response from management was: "Thank you so much for sharing! However, do you realize how good you have it here? Most jobs didn't have free food and top notch benefits." I must have heard 10 different versions of that answer. Again, I understand that you cannot just allow people to sit and complain without bringing up possible resolutions. I am not suggesting that managers should sit and allow people to vent without end. If your employees are venting in a kind and professional way, as a leader, you should listen and do your best to help them problem solve without making them feel like their thoughts and ideas are not valid. PAC had so much potential to be an amazing department (even with scheduling differences and limited access to functions and meetings). Unfortunately, during the time of my recent departure moral was continuing to decline. There are great people in PAC. People who care and who lead with kindness and humility. It is my hope that those people will take action and grab hold of the amazing idea that PAC stemmed from. I genuinely believe that the solution to many of the problems here is honesty and a willingness to be humble when you make a mistake.

Cons

Lost some of the culture with growth.

Cons

Imagine being passionate about security and having the entirety of the company you work for absolutely hate having to alter their systems/processes to adhere to industry standard best practice. Imagine stakeholders in other departments doing whatever they can to prevent you from making positive change. Imagine no one believing your "tinfoil hat" theories about attack tools, techniques, and procedures. Imagine being excited to try something new and novel and having no one, and I mean no one, care at all. Imagine being surrounded by developers who are rock stars (and rightfully so) and wanting to be the security version of that, yet slowly realizing there is no desire from leadership to be known for its security prowess the way that Amazon, Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple, Airbnb, etc. are. Imagine your passion for security draining day by day, leading you to question your decision to go down that path in the first place, making you truly believe you made a terrible mistake. Welcome to Zillow.

Cons

Compared to other tech companies, you'll spend a lot more time dealing with messy people data. That's not a con for me, but is a con for others

Cons

High turnover rate for new SEs. Less than 50% of the SEs hired in my class are still here a year later. However, a lot of them just weren’t doing the work they needed to be successful.

By far the biggest issue facing SEs is lack of good support with sales technology. Consumer facing Zillow tech is awesome and innovative. Consumers love using the website - it’s well designed and accomplishes the company's goals.

I wish I could say the same thing about the tools they give SEs. For a long time we used an old version of Salesforce with an internal tool for prospecting/pipeline management. It lacked common features that would make SEs more successful but at least it worked. Over my first year here though there was really no innovation on any of the tools and communication between sales strategy/operations and sales was non-existent. I reported countless bugs and feature requests - I would try to push ideas up the chain and just reach a dead end.

They’ve recently rolled out a new replacement for a prospecting tool and it’s extremely obvious that they didn’t put enough resources into it. Typos, broken features, bad usability design, etc. It’s not the end of the world - you can still be extremely successful even with the issues but I still find it troubling that we don’t put the same level of care into supporting sales that we do with consumer facing products.

Other small things - way too many pointless morning meetings sapping energy and productivity from SEs. A lot of times it feels like management is holding them to just prove they are working vs. actually providing value. We'll have 45 minute meetings to start our day where we sit there reading an article line-by-line while every SE is zoning out wanting to get back trying to hit quota.

On a daily basis they will have meeting where every SE/BC manager is in a meeting together. When we have a major issue with a customer there is no one to help. Lack of continued training for sales professionals - most of what we learn is self taught or from observing coworkers. The Denver office is also pretty cliquey - most of the mid-management has been here forever is is more focused on climbing the ladder/networking internally vs. rocking the boat and trying to push for innovation.