One of my worst working experiences - Anonymous employee Zizoo Employee Review

1.0
Jun 4, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

They hire passionate and professional people.

Cons

In my time at Zizoo, I felt extremely unappreciated and worked to the point of exhaustion. Over time this led to an extremely unhealthy work-life balance and impacted my physical and mental health negatively. I believe that Zizoo view their employees as a commodity and nothing more, offering no respite to combat the undue stress they put people under and instead adding more to it even when it is communicated. There is an unhealthy culture in this business and this is the primary reason for their high staff turnover. I know of a high number of other people who have also felt the same or similar and also left the company. These people were all very professional and will be massively missed by the company.

Zizoo Response
6y
Thank you for your feedback, which we have taken very seriously. We are sorry to hear your point of view. Zizoo takes many measures to ensure that we hire passionate and professional people, as you have mentioned, but we also make a great effort to ensure a happy and healthy office. In doing so, we offer our colleagues flexible working hours, health and wellness packages as well as healthy snacks in the office. We encourage our colleagues to take long holidays to have some proper R&R time. We also recognise the hard work of our team members through promotions and bonuses while also facilitating personal and professional growth and working on initiatives to improve the office environment and company perks. We are very proud of the fact that we have a happy and motivated team, many of whom have left us positive feedback. Our product, working environment and growth also earned us a feature as one of Berlin's top startups to work for. We truly hope that you could have benefited from some of our initiatives during your time at Zizoo and thank you again for your feedback.

Explore other reviews about Zizoo

1.0
Mar 5, 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Nothing positive to say about this company

Cons

Aside from the lack of opportunity to grow and advance in your career, management treated me horribly. So I am happy to not be working there anymore. The constant stress, working plenty of over hours without appreciation or a simple thank you, and pressure and fear of losing your job every month was just too much. Once I was sick for a week with something serious and when I came back they had hired someone else to take over all my tasks and I was basically pushed out. It was sold to me that I would be able to take over a new project but this situation and particularly the behaviour have always left a sour taste in my mouth ever since - especially because I found out from other people before my manager had the courtesy to tell me. Also, my manager always canceled meetings last minute, forgetting that a meeting was taking place or postponing it at the last moment. This left no room to properly plan the work day and also made me and others feel like our meetings were some kind of burden and not an important part of day-to-day business - especially considering that there was not much transparency, to begin with, and you would find out about changes or restructures in the last moment - even if they didn't make any sense. Furthermore, I and other contractors who were working full time at the company were just left without pay, constantly being told that we would get paid soon, basically letting us work for free for two months. Really horrible company and management. Never again.

2
1.0
Feb 27, 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I was at Zizoo for almost 4 years and I will say the number one pro were the amazing colleagues and people I met. Sadly, this was the case in the earlier years as they began to leave (should’ve been a red flag). The quality of team mates declined as they refused to fix issues within management and preferred to pay cheap salaries over keeping quality employees. I was always grateful and became comfortable with the opportunity to work remotely without being micromanaged. Any issues or concerns I had were always addressed in a timely manner and the overall vision of the company was promising this was all before the current management was in place. Learned a ton about the nautical industry and learned how much potential there is in it if there would’ve been an honorable and clear plan for business besides only being worried about sales to get investors to throw more money in.

Cons

-As much as every department got together and devoted countless hours in creating plans of action in order to improve the business, they were never implemented so every season we face the exact same issues with the hopes to “ fix it before the next season” -This final year was absolute hell for the operation team. We all worked together Diligently to overcome the cashflow issues as it was ensured to us time and time again that it was temporary. Once we realized it was not temporary they were already scamming clients, charters and having the operations team try and pick up the pieces. It began with late payments to charters then having clients pay twice and not refunding them to ultimately not paying employees their salary for months (I personally did not receive salary for two months while I was still expected to work full time) Since they claimed disolvency only German team was protected rest have been left with no answers or updates what so ever.

3
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All