Pros
1. Amazing work-life balance - You can show up at 10:30am and leave at 4pm. Since there is pretty much no career progression at this company, you might as well just do the bare minimum and you'll probably get by just fine. - This is made possible by whatever below-market compensation package you accepted to work here. It may also improve your chances of entering your 30's with a full head of hair. 2. Easy work - The lack of emphasis (or none, actually) on innovation simply means that you'll be doing nothing but copying and pasting the same configurable code for 2,000 Realogy franchisees over the next 5 years. - You don't need to be thinking about product improvements or ways to standardize processes. No one cares. Just have your daily dose of standups, coding, YouTube videos, 2 hour lunches, and start bagging up the leftovers for dinner. Don't even show up on Fridays unless you like the sound of crickets. 3. Low Expectations - The product targets an industry that is mostly unprofitable. Alternative solutions being MS Excel and sticky notes. - Realogy brokers will get this for free, so don't even worry about building a quality product to grow revenue and drive adoption. Just put your head down and start making stuff with interchangeable logos.
Cons
1. Management lacks relevant experience and leadership skills - Most are cheerleaders with bloated comp packages. They literally do no real work and there's not much you could learn from them that would make you intellectually competitive at tech companies. - Realistically, senior management at ZipRealty are only qualified as middle managers at real tech companies. There is some serious title inflation going on. 2. Lack of structure and career development - FYI there is no HR, marketing, finance, accounting, analytics, or sales teams at this company. You only need to know about 1.Product, 2.Engineering, and 3.Design because everyone else is insignificant and expendable. You will have little to no chance at building a career here on any other team. - Don't listen to reviews saying this is a great environment for entry-level engineers. Only come here if you can't pass coding tests. The organization as a whole operates as one huge mess and none of the teams have competent leadership. Code is a mess. You will pick up lots of bad habits along the way and miss out on proper training/development of key skills, which will put you in a position to be outclassed when going to any decent tech company in the future. 3. Laughable Comp - This company does not reward and properly compensate high performers, part of the reason why they're having so much trouble retaining talent. They might try to throw some Realogy stock options your way (not RSU) that will likely be worthless by the time it's fully vested, but most people don't understand the valuation and economics anyways so it worked to an extent. Many employees can easily bump up overall comp by 20-40% going elsewhere. - I don't think an organization needs to be hiring consultants and compensation analysts to tell them that they're hosing employees on comp. They know, and they love you for accepting their low-ball offers either because you're desperate (like I was), out of state (you're not familiar with the market), or need H1B (there are many classy organizations in SF/SV that does not intentionally underpay those in need of H1B sponsorship). - When you get an offer, make sure to negotiate 30-40% higher because 1. it's probably an unfair offer to begin with and 2. you will probably not get a raise for a long time. Speaking of raises, if you're not a squeaky wheel you won't get the grease. Management style here is to kick the can down the road, so even if a raise is promised expect management to be "working on it" for a long time.
