ZapLabs reviews

3.1

43% would recommend to a friend

(9 total reviews)

Jake Lyman

49% approve of CEO

41% positive business outlook

Reviews by job title

9 reviews

Reviews about "Compensation"

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1.0
Apr 2, 2019

Run the other way

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people are generally great. The office is full of friendly folks, and there's a push to create a welcoming and fun culture. Work/life balance is excellent

Cons

The company lacks a sense of direction. We were recently told we need to scrap the main app we've been working on for 2 years since being acquired. Ok, what now? Our parent company doesn't seem to know. We are basically being asked to tell them what we can do and see if they like it. For management, it's meetings 9am to 5pm daily. For everyone else, it's twiddling your thumbs and wondering when you'll finally be able to *do* something. Realogy now has a strangle hold on the company with no vision of how they want to utilize it. Recently the CEO and all but one VP was either laid off or left on their own. Probably 20 people (including our ONE in house HR person) have left in the past few months (from a team that was 150, so very noticeable) after a round of layoffs. The office lacks the life it used to have. Beyond all of the issues that have popped up since the beginning of the year, there's other issues: pay isn't great, health coverage is atrocious (high premium AND high deductible? yikes), parental leave is an absolute joke (5 days total. You read that right. Want more? Hope you enjoy unpaid leave) and career advancement is difficult unless you're one of the chosen few. The legacy codebase is absolute garbage. There's not even interesting work at this point since there's literally zero vision or plan of what's going on the rest of the year. It honestly makes me sad because when I joined, the company seemed to be full of life and full of people who just wanted to build a great product. Now we're a shell of what we once were and everyone seems pretty unmotivated and pessimistic about the future.

2.0
Aug 21, 2018

Get your foot in the door, but...

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- If you're a recent grad or new to the tech industry, this place is a good start. You'll get a wider range of responsibility than you would at a big tech company. -There are always people who genuinely care about you, want to help you succeed, and just want to make work a more pleasant place to come every day. - Catered food, while only twice a week, is from local restaurants who take pride in their reputation - Office view and location by the marina are as beautiful as it gets

Cons

I've seen reviews that say ZapLabs is top-heavy and reviews that say ZapLabs is full of juniors/associates. The fact is: both of these statements are true. The reason? ZapLabs' idea of career growth is putting employees on the manager track. Promotions come by way of getting senior or lead added to your title and being given direct reports. People are artificially kept at "junior" levels too long and then management quickly becomes the only path to advancement. And of course, people are protective of their "better" titles given that they had to grind way too long for them, which keeps the org from being as flat as it needs to be. - Pay is not competitive for a Bay Area tech company, and that highly compounds the above problem. People might not be so insistent about hounding management for promotions that put them on the leadership track too soon if base pay for individual contributors was more competitive. No one's primary motivator for stepping into a role that involves managing another person should be the fact that that increased people-related responsibility is the only way to get compensation on par with peers who are IC's. - Benefits are not up to standard. Can't speak much on the health care, but offering only 5 days of paid parental leave (you read that correctly) is the biggest offender. If this isn't changed, I worry about the company's ability to retain all of the university grads they're hiring once they get older. - ZapLabs didn't feel like it had the room to be bold, and felt like it was under Realogy's thumb. I'd never expect any big, intentional strategy decisions to come from us, but I'd regularly expect small, less impactful nudges from our parent company.

3.0
Aug 13, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Laid back work environment. Catered food twice a week. Great employees (currently) and very diverse. One of the mostg positive work environments I've ever worked in.

Cons

It appears that the only way to get a significant raise is to either go to another department within the company. There are a lot of positions where you're doing heavy product management tasks at an associate's pay (the title is everything, without the 'associate' title, you'd be making 2/3 more). And for a small company, there seems to be as many managers as there are employees. Almost as if to say there's about 1 manager for every 2 employees. This waters down the direction and it becomes unclear what direction to go sometimes

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