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Zen Planner

Engaged Employer

Zen Planner reviews

Crumbling Technology Organization - Software Engineer Zen Planner Employee Review

2.0
Mar 13, 2019
Software engineer
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people. Zen Planner has several talented engineers, and everyone is nice to be around. Your co-workers start to feel like family. Also, flexibility. The company offers (sort of) unlimited PTO and relatively flexible scheduling. The office is casual, with beers on tap and no dress code.

Cons

The legacy software. No software engineer wants to work on brittle code using a language that wasn't even that popular popular fifteen years ago. Different pieces of the application have been rewritten multiple times by multiple different teams, but the work was either never finished or poorly maintained. It feels like it's been touched by 10 different sets of hands and there's no consistency. Debugging is a huge pain. The frontend code does not use a modern framework. Which means everything is harder than is should be. Leadership seems to only care about pumping out features with disregard for system maintainability. People are leaving. It's not great to watch some of our best engineers walk out the door. If you're an engineer thinking about applying, pay attention to who's writing the reviews on here because not everyone's an engineer.

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Zen Planner Response
7y
Since this review involves technology, I asked our Technology leaders to provide the reply. See below from our Director of Engineering. "Thank you for your review. We're glad that, you too, value the people and consider them your Zen Planner family. As with any thriving software company, there is a "legacy code" aspect that engineering teams own and manage. Zen Planner is no exception to that. We recognize and acknowledge that. We also agree that software needs to be modernized as we go by leveraging modern technologies in a responsible way, addressing prior tech debt, and minimizing the amount of tech debt we take on as we develop functionality. The proportion of this tech debt tends to vary depending on where we are within the product lifecycle. We are committed to addressing tech debt and modernizing our platform, that we are proud of. Our recent initiative to address tech debt and developer experience (with things like kubernetes, AWS, and spring boot services) is an effort and a step in the right direction towards addressing some of these issues. We can assure you that this initiative is only going to get stronger with our commitment, our talented engineering team, and vocal critics like you that help us move forward. YOU are what is most important in our organization. Again, we sincerely appreciate your honest view and we thank you for your contributions to Zen Planner.” - Director of Engineering

Explore other reviews about Zen Planner

5.0
Mar 21, 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Zen Planner is a great company! We have gone through a lot of changes within the last 3 years, but I feel like we have come out the other side a lot stronger. The leaders at ZP/Daxko (our parent company) are amazing people and they are always very open to feedback and are continuously striving to be better and better. They practice what they preach and are very transparent and are very quick to admit when they have made a mistake and correct it. Even though ZP and our parent company (Daxko) have grown a lot over the past 3 years and have become a little bit more corporate, we still have a really great entrepeneurial and growth-mindset culture. I see ZP as a very strong company even in the midst of all of the challenges with COVID and I feel really grateful to be part of such an amazing company.

Cons

None that I can think of

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Zen Planner Response
5y
Thank you so much for your review! We are thankful for wonderful team members (like you!) who propel the growth of Zen Planner/Daxko and our impact in an industry that is poised for a strong comeback this year!
3.0
Dec 5, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

While the majority of these pros have slowly changed since the introduction of our new CEO, the one thing that still remains is the innate and genuine care each Zen Planner employee has for one another. The praise and willingness to help each other will forever be an amazing quality and it has allowed me to, for a long time, look past the insensitive changes taking place amongst upper management. Other perks include: free Friday lunch, dogs in the office, beer on tap, team events and company swag.

Cons

Since being acquired, it has become extremely evident the fire that once resided in our senior leadership team and made its way down to the remaining employees has burned out. The passion and motivation from all employee levels has been stifled by abrupt changes and the inability to communicate these changes effectively. Those who once had a voice and a direction have been muted and pushed to the side; including the leadership team who has had the employees back. The pay is horrible compared to industry standards. Denver is a mega tech center, its time to start competing or lose your brightest talent to surrounding companies.

7
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Zen Planner Response
7y
Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your review. We’re happy that you value the same things we see as our greatest assets, the people and their passion. As for the changes, we want to point out that during change it’s often difficult to see the big picture strategy behind the changes being implemented. We are strengthening our business structure and processes to achieve a long-term plan for rapid growth that will provide more opportunities to our team members and value to our customers. We are learning as we grow and have taken the necessary action to make sure that our communication is consistent and clear moving forward. Examples of this include weekly announcements and recognition during the Free Friday lunch for all team members and a monthly All Hands with Zen Planner leadership to communication updates on the business. These two venues are in addition to the Daxko Nation All Hands that has been held monthly with updates from our CEO and Senior Leadership Team. With our new vision of Making the World a Healthier, Happier place, we believe that 2019 only holds greater things towards our success. We encourage you to meet with your team lead or leadership team member and share this feedback with them directly. They can walk you through in more detail, the goals for the changes and more importantly, all the great things that aren’t changing, like our standard for living by values, hiring top talent and serving the industries we love.
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