Zendesk

The founders are terrific and really exhibit a lot of humility.

Great CSR program, and the company plays a very active role in the community. In SF, they have done a lot to make things better in the mid-market and Tenderloin neighborhoods.

World-class creative design team. Terrific internal and external branding.

Nice office and event space that exhibits Danish design elements.

Great weekly happy hours and lunch & learn sessions.

• Culture: There is no common DNA that binds the company culturally. The company must emphasize core values and have people at all levels of the organization “walk the walk”.

• Rampant cronyism/favoritism. If you are friends with the Sheriff, you can get away with anything in this town.

• "Flash" gets rewarded over substance.

• Lack of transparency in senior leadership. Financial and headcount planning exercises lack discipline and long-term thinking.

• Engineering is treated as a disposable “resource”, and full-time employees get treated more like contractors.

• Product management dictates what gets done without necessarily doing due diligence. Most things are done by a product manager’s “gut” feel without the corresponding responsibility. Non-technical PMs trying to run engineering teams makes things doubly worse.

• The operations engineering organization is an absolute nightmare. Things take forever to get done, and any efforts to fix this have not been effective.

• The company lacks long-term strategic thinking and tends to follow industry leaders without being thought leaders.

• There has been a lot of attrition in the company in the past six months. At least 10 people at the senior management level (VP+) have left the company, along with several tenured employees.

• The company was great a few years ago but is just not making the leap to the next level. Things have become extremely political, especially at the top. People put their interests ahead of the company’s. Really, really sad.

Please stop cronyism in the company and establish a fair performance review process. Rethink top-level management structure and reinforce accountability at all levels.