nice - ASDE Stayzilla Employee Review

1) Exceptional peers: Stayzilla hired a really good crowd for tech roles (by overblowing the ctc, 60% of which wasn't even paid), the peers were really good, although it was totally a waste since they never actually gave good work. 2) Work life balance: There's hardly any work, this could be useful for people preparing for CAT/GRE etc.

1) False promises in CTC: the ctc was totally overblown to attract top talent, but in the end the company only paid some 40% of total ctc, many things were included in ctc which weren't even legally allowed to be included. Apart from that there were stock options that were never given, we later came to know the company wasn't even registered with SEBI! Seriously, how much more shady this can get?! 1.5) Above point plus the fact that this is a ten year old company! 2) Zero learning: Absolutely no learning, not many senior tech people who actually know stuff, everything is built on baseless coding standards and totally non reusable code. 3) Bonus: The maximum bonus paid was literally half of what was promised. Many people were paid around 10k to 20k out of 2 lakh bonus. 4) Managers more than Engineers: That was the problem right from the beginning, the company didnt even have a decent product and there were so many managers trying hard to find stuff to manage. seriously? This is in fact the biggest hurdle in developing decent products, the managers nosing around every aspect of the product you build without actually knowing anything.

1. Homestays are picking up as an alternative to structured hotels in Indian tourism. This company is giving an organized platform for various options in many unexplored parts of India and tying up with some state Govts. 2. recently hired bunch of industry veterans - the CPO is an ex-Twitter Director (Pankaj Gupta). 3. Under Pankaj, the product has become much simpler, easy to use and average transactions have spurted significantly. Business is looking up. 4. We are working on some cool technologies on par with the bleeding edge of industry. The morale of the engineering team is at an all-time high. 5. Although a start-up, some much-needed structure and processes are being put in place (light-weight).

1. "Speed" is the new mantra - because of this, there is pressure of delivery. 2. Need to recruit more engineers; present team will not be able to deliver whatever is there on roadmap. 3. Quite a number of competitors are coming up on the homestay industry. This proves company is in the right space but there needs to be a clear differentiating strategy.