Zapier Reviews

Up until late 2018 I would have been writing a 5-star review here and recommending friends to apply, but it's tanked so quickly here. Badly researched product choices with little input from an under-appreciated UX team and a support team that is now turning into a call center style. Pushing head on with bad results because people with arbitrary clout demand it, even when the data team is demonstrating it's not working. Engineering teams being shuffled and reshuffled repeatedly with no stability in sight. Marketing being forced to defend their choices over and over, having their jobs at risk. Anyone not in US times being deeply second class citizens with any kind of decision making or independence (lots of churn for this reason). A lot of this is largely coming from poor choices in hiring executives and senior leadership across many departments. Managers are running amok with politicking and games of favoritism. So many of them rule by stamping out any kind of pushback and rewarding people who can do a flashy, if useless, project. They've rolled out a new framework they're labelling as a path to advancement but has really just demoted a ton of people and devalued who they are and what they do. People are starting to leave very quickly - many more are actively searching. They don't do much to try to retain their people at the IC level (unless you are lucky with your middle manager, who is going to also be suffering under the same framework/politicking as you are). Any kind of public messaging they have about transparency and values of diversity aren't true anymore (although to give them some credit, up until a few months ago they were generally accurate, and non-leadership still try very hard to uphold these values). I also especially discourage anyone who is from a diverse background to not work here, because there are clear biases and a repeated lack of action when problematic things happen, especially when it comes to evaluation and unfair, unqualified feedback. This has happened across several departments so there's no point in calling out a particular one. There are much better places to work when it comes to fully being who you are, even if you're looking for a remote job specifically. People have heard from HR/leadership when reporting issues on many occasions, "Well, I personally haven't noticed that." There are some awesome PMs and middle managers who are trying to shield their teams from nonsense and they can only do so good of a job before being worn down and forced into lanes themselves. It really sucks to give such a poor review given how much I used to love this place and how much most folks who have been here long term used to love Zapier too, but I don't want people to be suckered in by the public image they're trying to project. People have even called this out on supposedly anonymous culture surveys, but 1) a few people have been singled out for their responses so not really anonymous, is it 2) terrible results from this year were advertised to us as great ones, even as people pushed publicly for more change.

Leadership Development Needed: The engineering leadership would benefit from management training. The company currently assesses employee engagement and happiness based on the number of emojis received in posts, and evaluates engineers solely using metrics like lines of code written and completed tickets. However, these metrics are considered inaccurate, immature, and ineffective. Shifting Expectations: Employees often find it challenging to understand the criteria for evaluation. When changes occur, they are not adequately communicated. Unfortunately, surprise documents labeling individuals as failures without actionable feedback are common. Fear-Based Environment: The prevailing atmosphere is one of stress and self-preservation. Blame and finger-pointing are rampant. Management frequently emphasizes the company’s competition-related challenges to instill fear. Feedback Disregarded: Feedback provided to management appears to vanish into thin air. Conversely, feedback received from management tends to be unhelpful. Mixed Performance: Staff engineers exhibit varying levels of effectiveness. Some inadvertently create more problems than they solve for their teams. Ambiguous Engineering Principles: While “Move faster” is a guiding principle, the direction remains unclear. Projects have arbitrary deadlines but lack well-defined requirements. Leadership could set an example by improving the company culture. Transparency Gap: Although transparency is touted as a core value, it is not consistently practiced. Silent layoffs have occurred, and laid-off employees have been discouraged from submitting negative reviews. A targeted list of individuals seems to be under scrutiny, hindering their chances of success. Talent Drain: Capable engineers and leaders are leaving in significant numbers. Two out of the three founders are less involved, and the remaining founder lacks a clear vision for running the company effectively.