Zillow Reviews

Pros

The company as a whole is headed for some exciting times in the real estate space, affording many to enjoy the job security that lies ahead, along with excellent perks.

Cons

The work at the data ingestion side of the Vancouver office was rather dull, resulting in skills being under-utilized. Furthermore, management has shown themselves to be myopic in its decisions and seldom thought long-term. Even if they did think long term, they failed to properly communicate any long-term plans with the team. Concerns by subordinates have often gone ignored, and the manager has responded rudely to... suggestions. Rudeness could have been redeemed had they actually been competent, but on numerous occasions, substandard technical decisions have been made, resulting in arguably dense solutions that is hard to understand. Additionally, many have expressed concerns about the future of the Vancouver data ingestion team, since a lot of the work being done can be seen from an outsider (and by team members themselves) as being redundant. (Not to be confused with the data OUTPUT team. Their work is fantastic, and have a bright future. The data INGESTION team has far too many shortcomings, unfortunately.)

Advice to Management

Listen to your subordinates with an open mind. Years of experience is meaningless if you are not willing to listen to differing perspectives, especially if bad decisions are being made. If you are confident in your past experience, you should be ready to at least provide your own perspective based on your experience rather than to be dismissive without comment.

Pros

Great, intelligent, caring people. Opportunities to develop career, be part of an organization that is truly changing the industry. Leadership that is true to stated values.

Cons

A company that continually changes like Zillow can be challenging, and requires flexibility and discipline to be successful.

Advice to Management

Keep true to how Zillow started.

Pros

Started working at Zillow and have been promoted within short time. Amazing benefits. Free snacks. Good work environment

Cons

Still navigating through the hoops to achieve my career goals.

Pros

Culture work life balance and great project

Cons

The company as a whole is not as much technology oriented as Google

Pros

Strong focus on equity and belonging is transforming many aspects of the company. Much work has gone into modernizing the tech stack, so depending on the team you might find you tool chain and frameworks pleasant to work with. (warning is still loads legacy lying around.. just depends on the team) Lots of opportunity to move up through the ranks with so many departures. As a new employee you maybe be... able to negotiate a nice package. This is critical because after your in HR will clamp down hard on your compensation adjustments, even for top performers. Many of us joke we should leave to a start up for a few months then come back in order to get a raise.

Cons

So many people leave we have dubbed Fridays as "Farewell Fridays". Massive cost cutting is happening everywhere. Most of the perks that existed when I started are long gone. If you are coming from a non tech company the current benefits are probably par of the course. Just think of Zillow as a traditional Real estate company now and not a tech company. At the time of this writing Zillow is hemorrhaging... money in the Zillow Offers business and seems to be cutting everything possible to slow the bleeding. Related, if you are working in a part of the company not focused on the Offers business expect to be severely resource constrained. I suppose you could romanticize this as the rest of the business is getting lean and might rekindle a "start up feel" .. just a start up without much funding or perks... Many people do not know what they working on. There are secretive vague ideas and seemingly quarterly org changes. Many in the "know" have little to no roadmap or direction to share with most of their team. Of many parts of the company it feels like they don't want the stigma of layoffs so instead they are cutting benefits, lowering bonuses, etc in order to force people out. Multiple manages have discussed waiting for certain people to leave.

Advice to Management

Wow.. I mean it's basically a dumpster fire. I feel like every since the CEO change its been. rapid down hill fall. If I had to suggest just one thing it would be bring back "turn on the lights" as a core value in practice not in name only. Trust is lost on a massive scale here.

Pros

Fantastic at allowing you to grow as an engineer. Great work-life balance.

Cons

Not a lot of cons. There are some stressful times, but that's the nature of software development. Does a great job at making sure it's not too stressful.

Pros

Amazing benefits , decent work culture with your coworkers, and it’s an incredible resume builder

Cons

The company is moving in a direction that doesn’t have real estate agents (our main source of income and clients ) in the best interest. It’s become harder and harder to keep up with the vision that’s slowly turning the real estate industry against them.

Pros

No micromanaging as long as you did what was expected of you. Very nice and comfortable work stations.

Cons

When Zillow took over Trulia the atmosphere slowly changed and not for the better. Revenue is brought in by the sales teams and when you continually raise quota with the same payout as the original quota it really puts a bad smell in the air and the writing on the wall was very clear. Zillow has turned corporate greed into an art form. I was once proud to say I worked for Trulia/Zillow and now I am embarrassed... when I talk to my Realtor friends. I am truly glad that I escaped when I did.

Advice to Management

I have no advice because it would fall on deaf ears.