zenloop Reviews

Startup on paper, corporate culture in reality. Your salary will not reflect the latter though. So get prepared to not have an impact and be constantly micro-managed for a company with minimum perks and zero feedback culture. ⁃You will be judged not by the outcome of your work, but by number of cigarette breaks you took, chats with colleagues on non-work related subjects & any non-specific banter you might dare to engage in on slack. You immediately will be punished for that in a passive-aggressive way, the slack channel will be closed, new policy on breaks will be introduced. (Surprisingly they still didn’t come up punch cards, because “startup culture”…) . ⁃Top down management style. ⁃Above translates into absence of the team culture, colleagues are bonding mostly along the lines of venting about their managers. ⁃Top management has no people skills, doesn’t see employees as capable of innovative or creative solutions. Your voice will be occasionally heard, but if it doesn’t align with the view of top management, it will be cheerfully ignored and in some cases you will end up with 10 more new procedures you will have to follow before speaking up. ⁃All of the problems and blows are getting hushed, don’t expect transparency or honesty on anything. ⁃In the beginning you will be treated with a seemingly kind condescension and given extremely detailed feedback on all your tasks. Until you understand that there is only one way your manager prefers to get the task done, and if you don’t manage to smile, bow and unquestionably accept his feedback - you will eventually be fired. If you’re an independent thinker, smart and ambitious person - zenloop is not for you. Note: dev team enjoys the perk of being partly remote, and it seems to be guided by a different set of values: room of experimentation, intellectual curiosity & innovation.

Micro-management: a big red flag. Some managers tend to monitor every little step and alter every little decision in your tasks and they end up being overly-controlling. In that case, feedback falls in deaf ears and stress level is multiplied. This leads to a very toxic and unhealthy environment and a total burnout in managers and teams alike Controlling tendencies; Some managers lack the trust to relinquish control over employees' schedules/freedom/level of responsibility. Employees tend to do a lot of (unpaid) over hours (coming super early, leaving super late) because it is “highly appreciated” by some managers. It is for example preferred that you don’t smoke in groups, that you don’t use your phone very often… Ghosting: Even though the workplace provides an unbiased platform for employees to express their concerns and share feedback, it doesn’t make a real difference. These concerns are most likely going to be ignored. In so many cases, people get fired for no specific and solid reason. There’s definitely no equal pay between employees and the salary is NOT competitive. A lack of perks; there’s team-building week every six months where you actually end up burning the candle at both ends (rather than team building). PS: These points do not include all the departments.