Zillow

4.0

25 Jan 2018

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

Zillow’s culture is incredible, employees are happy 99% of the time because the company cares about us and genuinely wants us to be happy. We get treated extremely well and the perks and benefits are second to none. Thank you X 1 million. Zillow has a tradition of hiring new employees and immediately asking for their outside feedback, and fresh perspective to create positive change. This is so smart, and really hook, line and sinkered me when I was hired. Zillow tailors your workflow to your personality, we have 1 on 1s with management whenever we want, they make us their priority and work around us. They give us the freedom to explore avenues within our roles that fit our interests and help develop the skill sets we want to built. Spencer and the ZG leadership team are pros. They know that different kinds of minds working together in a collaborative space with the right tools can revolutionize an industry. They have created an atmosphere that breeds new ideas and creative solutions. Working on the floor together allows us to collaborate easily, come up with new pilots and make the company better. It makes you feel like you’re doing something important, but we’re having way too much fun. No one has that much fun at work. They don’t just want to make sure we’re doing well in our jobs they’re helping us develop as humans in life and in our careers. I’m so grateful for the coaching and development I’ve had at ZG. Management is always trying to help us find new ways to learn and grow for what comes next. If you want to teach yourself something new and move into a different department, you just have to want it more than everyone else and work really hard. Women are actually treated as equals, and this is the first workplace I’ve ever seen with this level of real equality. I think that’s what I love the most about Zillow. I really feel like it’s a melting pot of tons of different people from all walks of life. Working next to someone who’s background and life experiences are different than yours, you really get to know and appreciate them for those differences, not in spite of them. This breaks down barriers and opens dialogues, it makes us better listeners and better people. It’s what we want our country to be like, and it’s honestly a safe haven from the rest of the world for a lot of us. I feel happy, healthy, and safe at my job. I never wake up and dislike coming to work. Everyone is amazing and we’re doing something important. I’m very personally connected with Zillow’s mission and core values. It’s the reason I joined the company. I want to do something I enjoy, and that I’ll be proud of at the end of the day. I came to work for Zillow because I thought it was the place I could do just that. And it has been 100%, but right now I feel like that is being put in jeopardy which is why I’m writing this review.

Cons

I’ve worked at Zillow for over 3 years and enjoyed pretty much every second of it. I try to live our core values every day and I expect the company to operate under those values. Again, that’s why I’m here. Recently certain departments have started outsourcing jobs to 3rd world countries which is taking a toll on our quality and making employees of Zillow Group feel horrible. Don’t tell us how great of a year we had and then outsource portions of our jobs instead of fixing the problems that can be fixed to avoid that. You can’t put 5000 bandages on something and expect it not to fall apart. Take the time to do the job right and figure it out. We can do it. Also it’s really sad. These people are probably getting paid close to nothing to do some of our jobs, and to me that’s not Acting With Integrity. That’s Donald Trump behavior. We also don’t want to join every other company thats headed down this slippery slope. It makes consumers really angry, and that’s the opposite direction I thought we were going. Everyone’s had the experience where you reach out to customer service and get mad when the message comes back and you can’t understand because it’s a robot or someone who’s half way around the world completely disconnected from the product and the mission. Your problem does not get solved, you don’t get the help you wanted and the experience ultimately leaves a horrible impression. When this happens, people tell everyone. Word of mouth never dies and social media multiplies that. The internet can turn a small and unintentional error into a PR nightmare. Why risk it? We can balance the work, we just need to not get ahead of ourselves, perfect what we’re doing and then move forward. Leadership is being too aggressive, they need to slow down and take the time needed for the engineers to do their jobs and then make their next moves. This will negatively effect the Zillow Group brand. For many employees across departments this decision is deep within the gray area of the moral/ethical scale we hold ourselves to at ZG.

Zillow Response

Thanks for this feedback. I appreciate your passion for our culture and the work we do. One of the goals for our department this year is to scale up to meet new demand. To do that successfully we're using all the levers available to us, including staffing to meet maximum capacity and deploying new technology and tools for our employees and customers. In executing plans like these we keep our customers as our North Star while driving toward quality and speed to market. Our customers need solid solutions, and they need them now. But, launching and then iterating swiftly are part of the reason Zillow Group continues to be successful. There is no effort put into sugar-coating problems. We call them like we see them and focus on learnings that come with failing forward. To help us get to our goals, we also use external partners. Some of those partners have a global presence. There are a number of teams who rely on the expertise and talent of groups outside of ZG's corporate offices, and those groups provide high quality results. In this particular case, we announced the project to our team prior to launch, including the location and scope of work, and how it fit into our goals for 2018. There is significant focus to assist these partners as they ramp-up to provide the top-shelf results ZG expects. I agree with you that sacrificing quality or brand loyalty is a non-starter, regardless of the end result or goal. So please know that with both our technology and our staff, we are focused on applying our core values at each turn. If you would like to discuss further please feel free to reach out me jrg@zillowgroup.com. -JR Gast, VP Client Expereince

Amazing company, let’s keep it amazing. - Anonymous employee Zillow Employee Review

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