Bully managers and Bad HR mars whats otherwise a good env - Software Engineer Zendesk Employee Review

2.0
Aug 26, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Catered Lunch once a week Parties Nice office

Cons

Location: Hope you like walking past poop and needles every morning! HR protects the company: Bring up issues about your manager and they'll either forward them to the manager themselves or ignore them. Usually they did the former. Managers have total power: If your manager doesn't like you, you're not going to last at the company. They have total discretion to determine who gets to do what, and will assign you no work, then criticize you for doing no work. Finally, while the non-engineering onboarding was comprehensive, the engineering onboarding was virtually nonexistent.

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Zendesk Response
7y
Thanks for your thorough review. You make some really interesting points and we’d love to chat about them some more, particularly your comments around on-boarding, managers and HR so we can look in to the specific case you reference. Please reach out to confidentially to Ina-Marie to discuss more.

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Cons

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1.0
Jun 29, 2026
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CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There is a strong concentration of talented people who bring valuable external experience and perspective to the company. Compensation and benefits — including time off — are competitive. Work‑life balance is reasonable in some areas, but if you’re not based in San Francisco, you often have to advocate for it more actively.

Cons

The company operates with a level of indecision that makes long‑term planning nearly impossible. Role creation shouldn’t be treated as a short‑term experiment, yet decisions are made and reversed quickly. In several areas, the degree of micromanagement is counterproductive — you can’t hire strong talent and then prevent them from actually using their capabilities. Whether the root cause is insecurity or lack of competence, the outcome is the same: people aren’t empowered to do the work they were brought in to do, and it’s a real organizational issue.

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