Leadership does not believe in work/life balance and it's openly looked down on if you leave work at 5:00 pm- regardless of your professional impact on the organization. You'll often see people working until 8 or 9 pm simply because it's expected of them/they feel guilted into it. This outlook, along with many other questionable policies (both spoken and unspoken) puts parents, families, and people working multiple jobs at a clear disadvantage. This dynamic also shows a complete disregard for the mental health of employees.
The CEO cares far more about his own ego, his own money, and talking about his own accomplishments than he cares about the employees who helped get him where he is today. He seems to let his emotions rule his decisions and regularly lets his own pride cloud his judgment. It is my opinion, that he is in over his head and is not equipped to maintain a competitive business long term- made evident by the unrelenting control he attempts to exert over every aspect of the business- down to the most insignificant details.
In my personal experience, HR practices seem questionable at best, immoral and corrupt at worst. In recent months, it appears that many top performers have been let go after voicing concerns or pushing back against inhumane business practices. Those of us left never know where we stand and feel like we can't voice our opinions about things like working conditions, workplace bullying, unfair policies, discrimination and more.
There appears to be a certain level of confusion and toxicity across all departments, and in my experience, it's not isolated to any particular group of people. In my experience, professional growth is a myth at ZoomInfo. It seems like anyone who shows the tiniest bit of potential is exploited, overloaded with work, expected to make up for other employees' shortcomings, and the second they object to any of these asks, they're told they have a bad attitude. Once someone is completely disillusioned and burnt out, they're let go or pushed to the back burner and replaced by someone less jaded.
Employees seem to have no control over the work they do. Upper management tends to get involved in the smallest of decisions, often at the last minute, and expect entire teams to pivot months' worth of work to accommodate personal preferences or big egos. In conversations among current and past employees, this seems to be cited as the main reason for the lack of motivation a lot of us are feeling. How can you expect employees to take pride in their work when they have no say over how or what they do?
I am not understanding the person in previous reviews who addressed the handling of the COVID situation, perhaps they work in a different location or they managed to have been shielded from the worst of it.
The handling of the COVID-19 situation is actually what prompted me to write this review. In my opinion, to call it egregious, immoral, corrupt, and dangerous would be an understatement. During the beginning of the situation, an official company email was distributed saying none of the offices were located in high-risk areas, despite new cases mounting within a 10 mile radius daily.
I have several roommates and a handful of friends that were all allowed to work from home weeks before we got the go ahead to do so. But again, this was optional, and several key members of the leadership team seemed frustrated by the "inconvenience".
Two weeks after all neighboring companies had been working from home, I had to drive by the office on my way to a doctor appointment and was shocked to see the parking lot half full.
It is my opinion, that based on the conversations I've had with my colleagues and several of the people I manage, that there was a lot of fear and uncertainty about working from home. Because the choice was initially put on us, we were afraid of retribution or professional consequences if we actually worked from home. From what I understand, several people brought this concern to their superiors and the general sentiment was, it's safe to go into work, a lot of people are still working, but if you personally don't want to or if you're scared, feel free to work from home.
On top of this pressure- whether that pressure was perceived or real- once it was clear we should be all working from home, employees were strongly encouraged by leadership to work extra hours "since you're no longer commuting"
A company wide email also instructed employees that unless we had existing PTO on the calendar, we could no longer use our unlimited PTO during the pandemic. People with children or sick relatives were encouraged to figure something out with HR.
Members of the leadership team have recently been posting on social media touting the fact that we haven't had any layoffs. But, just this week more than 100 people (an estimate, since there wasn't much internal communication about this) were let go. The little information we got about the situation was basically a canned response about reducing inefficiencies. But, when management was pressed about whether it was related to economic downturns or performance issues, I was given a weird mumbled generic non-response about it being both. Yet, we're still all over social media bragging that we're still hiring. I find that odd. The "trim the fat" comment left by another reviewer really rings true to me.
Employees who have every reason to stay are walking away from ZoomInfo frequently, often without notice. The tension is mounting and leadership continues to exert extreme, weird control over us.
It's worth noting that, in the past, employees have been strongly "encouraged" to leave positive reviews here. I also find it extremely coincidental that anytime a negative review surfaces, a handful of positive, cheery reviews all posted within the same general time period will bump it downward.
My word of advice, don't be fooled by the good reviews, the arcade games (yes they were actually unplugged following the acquisition), the office studio/gym, or the fun murals. This place is utterly toxic... in my opinion.
