Bad culture set from the top - Anonymous employee Zola Employee Review

1.0
Jul 9, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You may have the opportunity to work on bigger projects than at other places. There is transparency around company performance and opportunities to learn about how business metrics work and are tracked. Coworkers are generally nice and easy to work with.

Cons

The leadership makes very strange statements about not wanting to hire people who ask for competitive salaries, calling them "mercenaries". Problems raised by employees tend to get turned around on the employee, even when brought up in earnest. They micromanage and harshly criticize on relatively small projects/issues while ignoring higher level concerns around the business vision, product roadmap, employee development, management training, team structure, etc. I agree with another reviewer that the management style is bizarrely old school. Overall, there are some opportunities to do good work at the company but the culture is just really bad. Even the best employees get talked down to and micromanaged. After a while the feeling of being disrespected and distrusted for no apparent reason isn't worth it.

Explore other reviews about Zola

5.0
Feb 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Team and perks are really good

Cons

Can't think of any cons at the moment

4.0
Apr 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I really enjoyed the culture and benefits while working at Zola. Every member of the team made themselves available for questions and help. There was never a time where I felt I couldn’t ask a supervisor a manager or team member for something and they would be annoyed or leave me hanging. Everyone is really so helpful.

Cons

The SNI agents ( mostly remote workers from the Philippines) cherry picked which tickets they wanted to tend to sometimes they took to the more simpler tickets to keep their numbers up and reroute it the more intricate tickets back into the queue. Management was very good about calling this out when we complained about it and sent out several announcements request requesting that this and requested that everyone take responsibility for the tickets that are routed to them. Unfortunately, my contract was not renewed because the company employed bots for our roles. I felt that this was greedy and disingenuous, but I do understand that majority of companies are moving in this direction for entry-level position positions.

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