Zillow

Most people are welcoming and are fantastic to work with. Management, however, leaves a lot to be desired.

My team had great people with whom I still maintain great relationships after my termination. The work was interesting, and I found great satisfaction in learning new things in a new sector. I did enjoy many things about my time at Zillow.

Onboarding was rough, as the team had little to no process for the work. The app for which my team was responsible could not be run locally, which caused all code testing to be done in a QA environment shared among multiple teams.

The inexperienced (seven months in the role) and ill-suited team manager was incapable of providing solid feedback, even when directly asked for it. There were three new engineers added to the team after I joined, and she had the habit of assigning the most difficult tasks to each new hire.

We discussed this as a team and finally were able to advocate for the final new hire, a junior engineer, so that they would have a more confidence-building experience. The manager seemed only able to provide correction for even the most minute mistakes, and never, in my experience or observations, provided any guidance or coaching to any member of the team.

This culminated in several team members not being able to successfully navigate the work under her leadership, and she ultimately terminated two of us.

Provide more proactive coaching to new and prospective managers. Tenure does not qualify someone to lead others effectively or manage work. In this case, I'd say it actively worked against this manager, as she seemed intolerant of anyone that did not immediately gain the depth of knowledge that she earned over her six years at Zillow.