Zonal Reviews

Zonal has some of the most passionate, capable people I’ve worked with — engineers, designers, and product folks all trying their best in a challenging environment. Unfortunately, their efforts are constantly undermined by systemic issues at the leadership level. The company has struggled for years to modernise. A revolving door at the CTO level, a lack of any coherent long-term strategy, and a painfully outdated tech stack have left Zonal stagnant while the industry moved on years ago. The last "digital transformation" initiative was more like a multi-year slow-motion car crash — lots of pressure, painfully slow progress, and zero willingness to truly reflect on why it kept failing. We tried to fit the windows before we'd even built the walls. People were hired for their skills and expertise and then consistently ignored, side-lined and eventually disposed of. Those who challenged the status quo were always destined to leave for "unspecified personal reasons". Decision-making is 100% reactive, not strategic. Work is frequently started without clarity on the "what" or "why", and the loudest customer of the week seems to set the roadmap. Developers are left chasing their tails and scratching their heads while leadership desperately tries to tick a box to earn a thumbs up. Redundancies were handled with minimal transparency and even less empathy. Despite previous assurances, another round came with very little warning — a cold, generic, cookie cutter email from the CEO followed by a 10 minute tick-box exit meeting with HR. There was zero accountability for top level mistakes, no genuine communication, and certainly no recognition for the contributions of those let go. Just, "We're having troubles. Its someone else's fault, the industry, yeah, the industry, that's it. Err.. Bye." People were left in the dark about why they were selected. The people that remain are still clueless as to what the direction is supposed to be. Senior Management appear to have buried their head in the sand and completely disappeared from view. If you're considering joining Zonal, understand this: you’ll work with genuinely great people and face technically interesting challenges. But you'll also have to deal with shifting priorities, empty, meaningless promises (especially around pay and bonuses), and a culture where accountability lands on the shop floor, well before it reaches the top. Benefits are minimal.. Don't expect wage rises or promotions — think statutory everything, no frills here — and you should be prepared to live month to month, treat it like a temp job. I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before you're pushed out when another project goes off the rails or "the industry takes another turn". You'll be told constantly "its a family business". Its not. Families talk. Families care. Families have your back. Family wouldn't treat its employees like they do. Thankfully, this is one family you can decide whether to choose. Unless leadership holds up its hands, acknowledges its problems, seriously owns them and commits to real, foundational change — both technically AND culturally — these problems will persist. Personally, I don’t expect that change to come. I expect the business to either be sold or continue to decline until it collapses completely. If you want to feel like your job has purpose, work somewhere else. If you want to be listened to, work somewhere else. If you want job security, again, work somewhere else.

The management is horrible and has no idea on what they're doing. There's no future planning of products. Directions are changed to often an impossible way without consulting the opinions of developers, who are actually working on it, and are just a decisions of a few non-technical people. And after we worked it out despite loads of effort, we were told we don't need that now. This is simply just wasting our time when we could have been using the time to work on some features that is absolutely needed in the products. Tech town hall meeting being the almost only meeting for us to keep up with the development of all products in Zonal just simply has no tech in it. They can't even set up the meeting right and the meeting is often cancelled or ended half way through due to technical issues, making it even harder for us to know what's the future plan of our products. The company never listens to us or tries to communicate with us. Nothing is delivered well internally. Had social events like Christmas events cancelled because they were too poor to afford it. No salary reviews because again, they were too poor to afford it.