Zapier

(Read the Cons before reading the Pros)

Completely remote.

Transparent culture. For example, company financials are shared with everyone in the company. Everyone is encouraged to work in the open (public slack channels).

My manager is great.

Gradually progressing towards more standardization of tools across some parts of engineering. For example, there is guidance being provided to engineering teams on golden set tools and technologies to use that will be supported for better developer experience. It is high time we did this, since it is becoming harder to work in a different team's codebase when needed due to a diverging tech stack. Cautiously optimistic that standardization will help with developer experience.

Some new leaders recently hired seem promising. For example, there is a new Director of Engineering in my "zone" (Zone is Zapier's terminology for focus areas within engineering and product). Though he is new at Zapier, he has already made a great impression on my team. He has taken the time to connect with not only managers, but also engineers. He has shown a keen interest in the tech stack and product details, and has been asking several probing questions. Our zone mainly focuses on the business growth aspects of engineering and product, and in the short time he has been here, he has already shared several insights and helpful tips on how to think about growth engineering challenges. I might be getting ahead of myself here, but Zapier has lacked this kind of strong engineering leadership in the past, and my team and I are optimistic about the future.

Zapier has gone through a crazy amount of changes in the last year or so, especially in the engineering and product orgs. Several leaders have exited, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

The crop of leaders left behind in engineering and product, though good people, are vastly inexperienced at dealing with a company of our stage, size, and growth.

Due to their inexperience in leading, they have put together processes that are ineffective and unnecessary. For example, the number of commits, the number of lines of code written, and the number of demos, etc., are used to measure an engineer's contributions. I don't understand how one measures impact by these factors.

The VP-level leaders keep throwing around buzz phrases like "Talent Density," but lack product vision looking ahead. Product UX is clunky and horrendous, but there is little to no effort in addressing that. I am all for data-oriented decision-making, but when the UX is so bad, one needs to take action. I have provided this feedback internally, but to no avail.

It is not quite clear to many in the company on why there are two separate engineering orgs. Due to this, engineering activities and technology are diverging and will likely lead to problems down the line with presenting a unifying product.

Strong leadership, especially in engineering and product, is crucial for success. Continue investing in strong leaders. There is a lot of pessimism across the company, and leadership needs to show that they trust the employees in driving good results, without unnecessary micromanagement.