Zillow reviews

3.4

54% would recommend to a friend

(2,507 total reviews)
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Jeremy Wacksman

57% approve of CEO

46% positive business outlook

Zillow has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 2,507 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Zillow employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
3.0
Jun 27, 2017

Zillow as a whole is great. My department, the worst...

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Overall company culture is great -Good people -Free food everywhere -Work life balance is good with PTO and DTO -Commuter Reimbursements -Gym Reimbursements -Referral bonuses -Casual dress code -Ping pong and video game rooms -CEO and execs are great

Cons

The operations department is where I spent my time. It started off good for about 3 months, then managements true colors start to show, or lack there of. The managers operate in an old fashion corporate way, not the Zillow-way. You get watched like a hawk, micromanaged, no recognition, no bonuses, no team morale. It's a dead end department where your Zillow career goes to die and if you are reading this and considering joining their team, DON'T... Yes, there is an internal transfer program, but the managers are not too supportive when you want to leave their team. They talk bad about the team your interested in to try and keep you to stay. They dangle leadership advancement carrots in front of you to try and keep you as the robot you are. No fun is allowed in the department, it's widely known as one of the worst departments to be in. They have no morale or team bonding events. Zillow encourages managers to take their teams out to bond and do happy hours, but they still don't. Their is no career advancement opportunities within the department either. There are people on the team 5+ years that don't have even a Senior title. There is no team leads. Just 2-3 managers with a bunch of pawns. Their is a ton of hypocrisy within the department as well - the managers all live by the do as I say, not as I do mentality. You're expected to be robots, while the managers sit on social media, CNN, Youtube, Amazon all day. Myself and other employees saw it all the time. They need to just clean house and start over, or do some serious management training (which is provided by Zillow), but they obviously don't attend. They pay you poorly, just about the Seattle minimum wage, and hope you stay forever and are happy with your yearly 1.5% merit bonus and 50 stock options.

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Zillow Response
9y
Thank you for your feedback. You don’t specify which Ops group you are a part of and we have many across the company. However, as a VP at ZG, your feedback is very important to me as it would be to any of our leaders. We pride ourselves on the quality of our teams and managers. We offer a full suite of manager training, as you mention below, and seek to provide a work environment in which each and every employee can be at their best. At ZG, our core values are our cornerstone and one of the most important to me is “Own It”. I will personally be looking in to the issues you highlight below. I also encourage you to “Turn On the Lights” by speaking to me or another leader directly so that we can do a deeper dive into your concerns and experience. Our HR team is also available as well. JR Gast, VP Client Experience jrg@zillowgroup.com
1.0
Aug 31, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

*learning about corporate values and learning about other departments *good benefits and random perks such as a fitbit and a passport card for discounts *great view of pike place and good location in downtown *good snack options

Cons

Honestly, my position is a glorified call center. If you don't call, you either text or email. Since we are a glorified call center, we don't get the benefit of having most holidays off and we work very unusual hours.That being said, the job gets quite boring and tedious. It's stagnant and soul crushing; it is probably the reason why people leave quickly. I say glorified call center, because most people do not know what they are getting themselves into. Some of my colleagues were not aware of the full details of the position, due to ambiguous phrasing from recruiters, until the actual training!

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Zillow Response
9y
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I’m sorry you’re not enjoying your experience at Zillow (though glad you like the perks, snacks, etc.) We try to be super transparent re: what the job is during the interview process, but we’ll take this as feedback that we may need to improve in that area. The attrition across the team is low, and most people according to our surveys enjoy the job. Some also use it as a stepping stone to more opportunities in the future (though we expect people to put in at least a year before moving.) Feel free to reach out to me directly if you’d like to discuss more, and see if you’re eligible for applying to different departments. You can email/call me at any time. tonys@zillow.com. –Tony Small, VP and General Manager, Premier Agent
1.0
Apr 18, 2016

Software Engineering Manager

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Flexible environment - Nice location

Cons

- No opportunity for growth - Flawed business model - No good leadership - Very old technical platforms

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Zillow Response
10y
Sorry you had a negative experience with Zillow. I'm glad you liked the flexible environment and location, but I respectfully have to provide an alternate perspective with some of your other comments. As our product teams continue to grow, we are constantly looking for opportunities to promote new managers from our existing employees. As a matter of fact, the large majority of our engineering manager positions are filled from internal employees (some with past management experience and some new managers). Our training for new managers is also improving with more formal training and mentorship. I'm proud to look back and see how many of our most senior managers (including those at our VP level) have risen within the ranks of our engineering teams over the careers at Zillow. I'm also proud of the leadership talent at Zillow. From informal feedback and the formal employee surveys we conduct each year, our managers are getting good marks from their teams. Good leadership starts with clearly communicated strategy, involves building and mentoring great teams and removing roadblocks and providing guidance to shipping great services. When I look at the teams we have built and the products we are delivering to our customers, I strongly believe our strong leaders are a key ingredient to this success. We have been building an incredible amount of product over our 10+ year history, and that has required us to look for ways to evolve the technical stack and use new tools and frameworks. New systems are often built up front with newer technologies, but even our older services are getting rebuilt over time. We have more work to do, but I am glad we have a plan in place to continue to push these technology advances with front end frameworks like React.js and mid tier and backend services in Java, Python, Spark, and a growing number of AWS based technologies. Our major releases are happening more frequently, even as we grow in team size. There is no doubt more to do, but again, I am proud of the progress the team is making. And lastly, our business model is going quite well. We are a public company and release a lot of financial information to provide supporting evidence of this. Our revenue growth is strong and we continue to look for ways to continue to further evolve our strong Premier Agent business. Ultimately, we focus on building products that help make all our customers (buyers, sellers, homeowners, agents and brokers) successful at accomplishing their goals of finding the right home, selling their property, understanding their home value, neighborhood and how they can continue to invest in their property and finally for our agents, connecting and managing the relationships with buyers and sellers in productive way. I would be happy to talk with you about this further. While I am confident in our team and products, I appreciate constructive criticism. We always have room for improvement, so I do value the feedback. That is true for others who want to provide feedback or see things that don't seem right from our technology roadmap or management team. Please reach out to me at davebei@zillow.com. - David Beitel, CTO Zillow Group
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