Shopzilla Reviews

Pros

The leadership is innovative and compassionate but also challenging and wants to make sure we enjoy our work environment. My project manager was a hard ass but also worked harder than anyone I'd ever seen and was a total company woman without being a kiss ass. The comments that I see about this company baffle me and can only be from lazy ass people who truly couldn't hack it at this company where they are workaholics and actually expect you to deliver.

Cons

The new owners at times seemed to be only concerned with the bottom line, which if you are an equity investor, which all employees are, is a good thing but then again they need to recognize that the bottom line is because of their dedicated employees who are the talent that make this company what it is. They need to not be too nearsighted less they lose sight of their goals in the end. I think that cutting back, as they did with my job, will eventually hurt them in the end.

Advice to Senior Management

See above and appreciate your employees and realize keeping on your talent will, in the end, pay off!

Pros

Benefits
Free Lunch Everyday
Casual Dress Code
"Start Up" Look and Feel

Cons

Poorly designed websites stuck in the 2000's
Unsustainable business model
2 rounds of Layoffs
Extremely High Turnover
Stuck Up and Immature Management
Management elitism
Lack of communication
No Team Chemistry or Cohesion
Poor people development
Business Model based on outdated market conditions, very volative and vulnerable.

Advice to Senior Management

Innovate rather then imitate. Once Google cracks down on "thin" CSE's, the ballgame is over.

Pros

free food and snacks, casual dress code, fun events

Cons

stuck- up management, no communication.

Advice to Senior Management

keep your employees happy. you couldn't do this without us.

Pros

Lunch, Snacks, Employee Events, Used to respect talented folks.

Cons

I will speak only about the IT/Engineering department. There are a few people that the senior management gotta fire if they ever hope to retain engineering talent in this company. Cause these people treat this company like their private club and are driving talented people out of the company. Look carefully at your directors and the project managers. I know at least 5 people who have quit in about 8 weeks after being frustrated by this inner political circle of people. These folks can get away with anything in this company. They don't listen to input from talented engineers and they want to do things their own ways even when their ways lead to no delivery. They have the authority to treat people like dirt and the senior management can't seem to do squat about it. Talented engineers are leaving the company in droves because these middle managers and project managers just won't let a hard working free thinking employees survive. If you are not buddies with these middle managers your career at the company is pretty much stalled. You can work as hard as you can, but you are not going anywhere. That is the only reason I and several people around me quit . And this untouchable and inefficient political club in the middle management is the biggest problem with this company. At the end of the day who care, they want complete control, sure take it. There are plenty of other good places who are happy to steal talent from this company.

Since they are unable to retain good engineering talent, outsourcing has started at a fast pace. This is frustrating the employees even further because it is super hard to work with people on the other side of the globe who know very little about the company's business and technology.

Advice to Senior Management

Guess what, if you let your middle managers and project managers treat your employees like dirt, there are plenty of companies that are happy to offer those employees jobs. You want to sacrifice the future of the company to keep these middle managers happy, then you wish.

Pros

Great benefits. Free lunch. Great location. Lots of fun company events. Opportunities to take classes and for professional development.

Cons

Poor leadership. The company culture is cliquey and management is more concerned about their own advancement than the growth of the company and employees. The company tries to communicate a fun exciting culture, but at the end of the day, the way employees are treated isn't great.
The company tends to hire quickly and fire quickly. Aside from a handful of people that have been there for years, most people are in and out quickly.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't focus as much on the company parties and really focus on employee development so people stick around.

Pros

The usual that everybody says: Free lunches and snacks, Company events, Casual dress code,

Cons

1. Two Rounds of layoffs in the last 6 months.
2. Management's incompetence and desperation shows in the frequent org changes and change in directions.
3. No innovation. Absolutely none. Just copying features from their main competitors.
4. Promotions primarily based on being friends with the managers. Hard workers often get no glory.
5. The worst problem in my opinion is this : A lot of managers have no business being managers. They were made managers cause they were friends with their managers. They are immature, got no people skills, act rude, push people unnecessary, put people on spot and act just plain mean. They are the ones who are destroying the teams. So many people have left in recent months because of them. These people can get away with anything in this company. This makes employees super mad.
6. The best people working in IT are either gone are are planning to leave.
7. Other people have rightfully pointed out the project management nightmare. People who were secretaries have been made project managers. They have no management education or skills, no understanding of the engineering work and all they do is suck up to management and be mean to the staff.
8. Overall the company has become a nightmare. Employee morale is super low and it is reflected in the employee survey results.

Advice to Senior Management

Free lunches don't keep the employees.

Pros

A fun group - they had a great sense of humor and an outstanding internal culture. Good benefits, outstanding free lunches, and operated on flex time. The IT support is great and their development hardware was awesome. CEO was extremely accessible and friendly.

Cons

The are actively working to decouple their future success from existing external dependencies - until that happens, they will forced into a reactionary mode too often.

Advice to Senior Management

Thank you for the outstanding opportunity and good luck with the new management structure and future opportunities!

Pros

Free lunch and drinks.
Special events can be fun at times.
Good group of people in the company aside from senior management.
Plenty of talented people.
Work benefits.

Cons

Senior management does not which direction it wants to take the company.
Recently got bought out by Symphony Technology Group and will lead to outsourcing eventually.
Management does not offer personal or professional growth.
Promotions require dude-like conduct with senior management. Hard workers are not rewarded.
The company wants to portray itself as a start up internet company. Fails miserably.

Advice to Senior Management

Shut down Tada. Reach out to employees to discuss future. Reassure the employees that we are in a steady business environment.

Know your jobs.

Pros

Catered lunches, free drinks, company events

Cons

Lots of politics.
Incompetent and arrogant senior management.
Sucking up is valued more than your good work.
If you had joined 5-7 years ago, were good at sucking up you had future, not anymore.
No clear vision of where the company is going.
No racial diversity in management.
Lack of innovation, just copying stuff from other sites. If you want to know what features are coming on bizrate, just look at what has been introduced in nextag recently.
Outsourcing in progress.
Lot of competent workers leaving.
Nothing exciting happening in the company. Management just dragging their feet.
Arrogant project managers with no technical background. Status, status, status is all they know.
Sweatshop kind of environment for IT workers. Very high pressure and managers often rude to employees.
Some managers are just plain j-er-ks. No maturity, won't even say hi to you they came across you in the hallways.
Lately the food has been very bad too, so there goes the last incentive to work there:-). Not kidding.

Advice to Senior Management

Nobody cares about your lofty plans because people can see through the bull. So why don't you cut it and really listen to the folks. There are great people still there, so do something before everybody leaves.

Pros

Free lunch, Casual dress code, Company Events ( pretty much the same things other reviewers have mentioned ).

Cons

1. Unless you try very hard to hang out and please the senior managers, your chances of career advancement are poor. And if you suck up, you have good chances even if your performance is not so great.

2. Big layoffs in summer of 2011, despite management's repeated assertions that layoffs are not planned.

3. Many of the best IT workers the company had, have left the company for other jobs in the last couple of months.

4. Outsourcing to India is in full motion. The parent company STG has a big outsourcing operation, so expect more and more jobs to be shipped abroad.

5. Management has lost credibility with the employees. In water cooler chats, employees are often talking about the lies being fed to them.

6. It is true that the senior managers have kind of an elitist attitude and often come across as rude.

7. Senior IT managers have recently been treating employees with disrespect. It is been turning into a typical high pressure, low respect, low reason IT sweat shop. So don't believe the great things they say about themselves on their websites.

8. I feel obligated so say something about IT project managers since I noticed that other people have been doing the same. I thought I was the only one who had a negative opinion of them. Seems like many people dislike working with them, but just never speak about that because of fear of reprisal. So bottom line is, IT project managers are indeed incompetent, bossy and often pushy. They have no understanding of the work being done and that ignorance show up from time to time. I'm not surprised that the teams of highly educated, highly skilled engineers don't respect these PMs. But don't expect anything to change.

9. Overall I think it is not a good place for software engineers. It used to be much better, but no anymore. So stay away.

Advice to Senior Management

I don't have any, cause I think nobody in the leadership would actually pay attention.