Amazing team cut short by a bad business model
Pros
The entire Homes Marketing division in itself was a culmination of what I will argue are leaders within their role, team, and organization. We had an opportunity to truly make an impact in our role as we saw fit and were always given the support needed to expand from within our role. For such an established organization it truly felt like a start-up environment. While the workload was there, I can confidently state there was never an instance of feeling overwhelmed. Work/life balance was/is still an important concept to them. With the recent announcement of the layoffs the supervisors, managers, and even senior management have been very transparent with the process and I can feel the depth of their disappointment, frustration, and confusion as to the decision of the c-levels, but that's where it ends for me.
Cons
The news of the layoff was truly heartbreaking to me. As a working professional that has gone through the ringer with employment the last couple of years because of Covid, I truly felt like I finally found "home" with Zillow. I was promised many things that they truly did deliver on, but after working for a while and understanding their business model I couldn't help but feel it was too good to be true. "How are they paying above market prices for homes, renovating, and STILL trying to make a profit?" I thought, but just brushed it off. Then the Tik-tok's started rolling through with many industry professionals expressing their disdain for Zillow's approach to "market manipulation" pumping up home prices in some hot areas with other reports of them selling homes for LESS than what they bought them for. Then came the sudden news of our halting of purchasing to "catch up on our books" as they said but at that point I knew the damage was done. losing millions trying to squeeze markets and it blew up in their face, blaming it on some bogus algorithm when in reality they did not understand the core concept of flipping real estate to buy low and sell high, not the other way around. From the outside in I feel there might have been a lot of pride with their algorithm as they have relied on it for so long, no one wanted to admit when it was going wild. But hey it's just one expensive business lesson for them and hardship for 2000 people who have to pay the real price. It's just such an insult to the real estate industry that such a well established company like Zillow allowed for these things to happen when it was blatantly clear that what they were doing was not working by any means. It's hard to say I would never work for them again given my team and work were simply amazing, but given the right opportunity I will do my due-diligence in questioning every decision and speak up when I don't feel something is right.
