Great place to work just to get by. - Software Development Engineer Zillow Employee Review

1.0
May 10, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You don't have to work very much. You don't have to be a good engineer.

Cons

This is a pretty lame company for an engineer. tl;dr - you will not get to make any decisions, you will not even be given any information until it's time for you to grind out some code, there is no sense of career growth whatsoever, and your coworkers will be lazy. Orders and all company decisions are handed down from the top. If their decisions are wrong, they'll fire some middle manager scapegoat and craft new ones without listening to their employees. Product managers will hangout in meetings and won't invite engineers even when they're discussing important details and information about the products said engineers will be working on. You will be told what to do, you don't contribute to the vision. Zillow has a lot of B-rate "senior" engineers who will stop any change, regardless if it's beneficial, to the code/stack. A lot of them are pretty lousy workers too. If you're not brought on as a senior hire, you will get the monotonous work. This is not the place for any sort of career (or personal) growth as an engineer. HR is trying to engineer the company culture, which means you have to do stupid things to entertain their whims and a lot of awkward, low-budget events happen around the office. Many people just take the opportunities to go home early, so much for the company culture. The finance department is very bureaucratic, it will take a long time to get anything, to say the least.

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CEO approval
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Pros

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Cons

Long hours with low pay

1
3.0
May 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You can make good money here.

Cons

In sales, job can change often. For example: I was making good money and excelling because I am a relationship Sales person. Then they changed it to where you get the sale, and instead of being able to grow that account via that relationship you just broke into, you have to pass it to an account manager and go back to cold/robo calling. You "book" of business you recive to prospect from is a lottery. I received a book of prospects/accounts that most of the were low income, or senior living properties. They don't have a budget and have a line of renter on a waitlist. No way to convince them to spend money on advertising but you still have the same quota.

2
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Zillow Response
3w
Thank you for sharing such a detailed perspective. We understand that frequent changes to roles, account ownership and business priorities can have a real impact on relationship-building and the day-to-day experience in sales. We’re glad to hear compensation was a positive part of your time at Zillow, and we appreciate you being candid about where the model and structure felt frustrating. Feedback like yours helps us better understand how these changes are experienced across teams as the business evolves.
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