Pros
The pun invites itself and I will explain to you why. In short, the founders had a brilliant idea, the gumption to see it through and the intelligence to hire the right people to make it a success. Now they need to get out of the way. First of all, the pros. Without a doubt the single most positive aspect of working at Houzz are the people. Houzz attracts amazing talent that are also wonderful human beings (for the most part). Retaining these people is another matter and recent losses of talent have been staggering. I have made friends for life at Houzz and for that, I am deeply thankful. It is for their benefit that I truly wish the best for this company. Other important positives are the beautifully decorated offices, decent food and transportation benefits. You’ll certainly need that last benefit to make it in one piece and with your sanity intact to and from the most inconvenient location in the Bay Area. You’ll get your head bitten off if you even dare to hint at remote working.
Cons
Now for the cons. Take a deep breath and join me, won’t you? 1. The most disturbing and utterly baffling con is the complete and total lack of leadership support for diversity and inclusion. One would assume that in 2020, at a fairly well known interior design tech company, ensconced in the warm embrace of the liberal Bay Area, that I wouldn’t have to warn potential job candidates about this. Well, I do. Please note that I said “leadership support” because the recruiting team is doing their best and is fully on board with D&I, they just don’t receive any support for their efforts from above. The President of the company stated in 2019 (verbatim, I wrote this down at the time because I was so shocked he actually spoke these words in 2019): “Houzz will never do anything publicly to support diversity.” I’m going to leave it at that and not boil your blood with all of the other sordid supporting details. The standard Houzz leadership party line is that “Houzz does not engage in diversity efforts because it is considered ‘political’.” Wake up, we are talking about human rights here. If you care about D&I at your future employer, do not come here because D&I is DOA at Houzz. 2. The Palo Alto HQ location and aforementioned outright refusal to allow remote working … with one big exception and I will get to that below. If you are going to choose to base your company in Palo Alto, far from anywhere remotely affordable or culturally relevant, then allow for flexibility in where people work. It’s 2020, knowledgeable talent will take their skills elsewhere once this becomes apparent. I’m not suggesting a remote work free for all, you can set boundaries on it such as one or two days per week once you’ve been employed for a year. The biggest rub is the exception I mentioned above; if you are an engineer you can do whatever you want, remote working and truly unlimited PTO included. 3. Along that vein, the two tiered structure is another con. Houzz is basically two different employers rolled into one. If you work under the President, you have freedom and flexibility to work as you please. If you work under the CEO, well, gird your loins. Prepare to have your very existence questioned any moment you are not at your desk. Prepare to have the most mundane requests scrutinized by her personally. Her lack of empathy is terrifying. Houzz laid off over 100 employees last January, most of whom were based in Europe and she couldn’t even muster the nerve to break the news in person. Instead, they were left with a tone-deaf video call at the end of their workday that was more reminiscent of a hostage video than a remorseful CEO breaking bad news. Questions were not permitted and she couldn’t even inconvenience herself to accommodate the time difference. It’s a business, we all understand that, just run it with a modicum of human compassion when things get rough. 4. An incompetent “branding and communications” department. If any team needs to be cut it’s this one. These duties should be farmed out to actual professionals because no one can ascertain what they do beyond blatant sycophancy. [Begin heavy sarcasm]. Oh wow, you landed Houzz one tiny reference in a board game that no one has played since the Eisenhower administration! Congratulations on 2 years of hard work. You’re absolutely correct, no one uses Instagram these days, best to avoid any engagement with those pesky kids on there. Our key demographic of boomer midwest Karens and Eileens are going to live forever and keep buying all of the beautiful Trump-branded table lamps available on Houzz marketplace. We are a family … but only internally and we don’t publicly advocate for diversity in said family. [End heavy sarcasm]. I did forget the most important duty of the “branding and communications” team: strong arming unsuspecting people into writing positive reviews after a negative review is published on Glassdoor. So take many of the positive reviews on Glassdoor with a heavy dose of salt. Because attempting to actually deal with the consistent and endemic problems presented in those negative reviews would mean delivering bad news to the founders. 5. No 401(k) matching. 6. Pay scales are terrible. Know your worth, do your homework about Bay Area market rates for your position and be firm about it. This will be necessary because if you ever want a raise in the future, you will need another job offer in hand to get it. 7. PTO policy is a total scam. Houzz will go on and on about “unlimited PTO” but DO NOT FALL FOR IT, it is highly monitored and controlled. It is an attempt at having their cake and eating it too. If you don’t have fixed PTO amounts, you don’t have to pay an employee out upon termination of employment. Any amount of time over X days requires supervisor approval and good luck with that if you are in certain departments. I put in “X” because it depends on your business unit. As noted above, if you are an engineer … the limit does not exist. 8. The overall culture of secrets and distrust.
