Senior Site Reliability Engineer Interview Experience - Ballston Spa, New York
Process
March 11th - I was cold-contacted via LinkedIn mail message by Zapier. We conversed via email and set up a half-hour initial interview.
March 13th - Screening went well. The person did a great job explaining the technology stack. The person said Zapier is proud of their interviewing process and they promise feedback even if you aren't selected. I was very impressed.
March 27th - 1st Interview: Interviewer never showed up for the Zoom meeting. After 5 minutes, I emailed Zapier, asking if everything was okay and if we needed to reschedule. I stayed on for 15 minutes and received no response via email. Eight hours later, I got an email from them apologizing and we rescheduled for the 7th.
April 7th - 2nd Interview Take 2: Pretty standard stuff; I think it went fairly well. I didn't think I was a good fit technically for them. My gut feeling was they wouldn't move to the next step with me.
April 15th - Surprise! I got an email stating they wanted to move forward and give me a take-home tech project. I was actually pumped about this; maybe my gut was wrong!
April 16th - Got the GitHub project invite for the project with good requirements. They said no deadline but they would like it to take about a week.
April 23rd - They sent me a check-in email to see how it's going. I replied saying I hoped to get the project submitted on the 27th; no response received.
April 27th - I still needed a few more days (my current job is a grind), so I sent them another email with the status. I never got a response.
April 30th - I submitted the project and sent another email, asking if everything was okay because I never got responses from my previous emails. I also reiterated my excitement to hear the feedback from the team on my project.
May 1st - I did get a response to this. It turns out they might have been having issues with email being sent. They confirmed that they expect feedback from the team in the coming days.
May 5th - I got a status email from them that the team had been busy and would have the feedback ready the next day. I was really excited at this point; good or bad, I love feedback!
The next day, I got a "Sorry, we aren't moving forward with you" email with ZERO feedback!!! NOOOOOOO!!! :) The cherry on top was, no joke, I was told I couldn't re-apply for 6-12 months. Wait a minute! You cold-contacted me!
I wish I had read the Glassdoor interview reviews prior to wasting so much time with Zapier interviews. I won't be answering any future contacts from this company.
Questions
Why are you looking to leave your current job?
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Zapier Senior Site Reliability Engineer role in Ballston Spa, New York.
Success Rate
Zapier's interview process for their Senior Site Reliability Engineer roles in Ballston Spa, New York is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Zapier's Senior Site Reliability Engineer interview process in Ballston Spa, New York.
Zapier Work Experiences
- 2.0From Empathy to Micromanagement: The Decline of Zapier’s Work CultureSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeJuly 7, 2024Pros: - Good pay. - Interesting engineering problems to tackle.Cons: Shift from supportive management to a micromanagement approach focused on fear of poor performance reviews. Engineers are treated like children, with constant monitoring of their work to ensure they are meeting expectations. Performance is now measured by arbitrary metrics like Merge Request numbers, commit counts, and comments, rather than actual contributions. Employees are afraid to speak up for fear of being fired, with an apparent goal to have a certain percentage of performance-related attritions. Surveys are being selectively shared, with management only disclosing portions that align with their perspective. The shift to impact reviews discourages teamwork and forces only doing "impactful" work, leading to tech debt, hacks, and quick fixes that make systems unmaintainable. Upper management imposes rigid “talent practices” without considering employee input, creating a toxic environment. ICs are held to strict accountability standards, while upper management isn't.
- 4.0Great Tech, Needs Better ManagementBackend Engineer • Former EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJanuary 12, 2025Pros: Good working environment and always at the forefront of technology.Cons: Need to improve management and administration areas.
- 5.0Great company culture, together with smart and kind coworkers, makes Zapier a great place to workSenior Fullstack Engineer • Current EmployeeDecember 28, 2022Pros: Work-life balance is the most important factor for me when looking at jobs, so I'm happy that Zapier is great in this area. Some concrete examples of this are: * No-questions-asked PTO * Realistic delivery timelines * A good culture of disabling Slack notifications after work hours. Since Zapier is fully remote, there is also a great culture of knowledge sharing and asynchronous communication. The technology stack is relatively modern and interesting to work with. Base pay is very competitive. The company places great importance on DIBE (Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity), and is transparently making improvements on this.Cons: Some growing pains are evident in goal-setting and change management. Discussions with lower-level ICs make it seem like more than a few teams struggle with aligning on wider company purpose and feel bogged down by tech debt accumulated over so many years.
