Repeating a lot of what's been said already here... I saw all the same reviews before joining regarding how unstable everyone's jobs are and how Zepz has been heading in the wrong direction for years now. I had to experience it all first-hand just to be able to come back and repeat the same warnings to those considering taking a job here.
My team was roughly 50% former Sendwave employees and 50% new hires alongside me. Despite hearing lots of pessimism from the Sendwavers about the outlook of the company, my first few months were great -- the code base was really well thought-out, the workload was manageable, and projects were interesting. However, after those first few months there was a round of layoffs just in line with everything I'd read about the company. My team was spared in this round of layoffs, fortunately.
At about my 6 month mark, we had a very nice team-bonding trip bringing us from all over the world to celebrate our new team. Despite the layoff concerns, things seemed to be going well. Surely we were OK since we were mostly recent hires, right?
At around my 9 month mark, the luck ran out. Suddenly, two of my teammates had their accounts deactivated, and we were told they were given the choice between a severance package or a performance improvement plan and had opted for the former. These were well-performing employees, and after talking with others offline I learned that they certainly were not given any option to stay (why lie to us?). The following week, about 50% of my team including myself were laid off. To give you an idea of how little they care about their employees, one of my teammates went on maternity leave a few months before this. Not only did they hire a replacement for her, but they laid off both the replacement and my colleague on maternity leave just a few months after she began her break. The layoffs to the rest of the team slowly came one-by-one even after I left.
Imagine being a new mother in the middle of your leave and needing to sign on to a call just to hear that you and the new hire to fill in for you while on leave have both lost your jobs... Or being hired to a team of a bunch of fresh faces, only to all be canned less than a year later. There's no absolutely no forward thinking at Zepz, and if you have to take a job with them just know that you are essentially a contractor even if it's a full-time role and should always have your eyes on the door.
Other side note, again repeating what's already been said here, any promises of a bonus are empty. If you are even lucky enough to last a year, they won't give you that bonus that they lured you in with to make up for the fact that they also don't give equity to new engineers!
