Zendesk Employee Reviews about "work life balance"
Updated Nov 22, 2021
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Top Review Highlights by Sentiment
- "There are a lot of teams to help you get the answers you need and there are some really great people who work here." (in 187 reviews)
- "As above Zendesk has a great culture based on it's people and trying to do the right thing." (in 163 reviews)
- "Senior leadership is out of touch and need to align what they say the businesses goals are with the strategic decisions they are making." (in 29 reviews)
- "Upper management and HR were aware of this said manager's behavior, but did not show any support to the employees affected by this." (in 14 reviews)
Ratings by Demographics
This rating reflects the overall rating of Zendesk and is not affected by filters.
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Reviews about "work life balance"
Return to all Reviews- Current Employee, less than 1 year★★★★★
Senior Account Executive
Feb 10, 2017 - Senior Account Executive in San Francisco, CARecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
- The Product... such a great product and the company is very product focused - The culture. Everyone is real. - A lot of opportunity to make really good money.
Cons
Work/life balance... at least in Sales which is typically the case at every company.
Continue reading - Current Employee, more than 3 years★★★★★
Surely a great company to work
Jan 10, 2021 - Software Engineer in Dublin, DublinRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Career development Annual budget for self development Flexibility and great work life balance Good compensation and benefits Really nice offices Care about their employees
Cons
I can't think of anything that would be actually relevant
Continue reading - Current Employee, more than 1 year★★★★★
Best company i've ever worked for
Oct 31, 2017 - Anonymous Employee in Dublin, DublinRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Relaxed environment Always fun stuff happening throughout the week Great autonomy to the role People are super nice Food and drinks are great Workplace experience is amazing Exciting product and growth Work/Life balance is amazing and very flexible
Cons
I can't think of any cons to working here and I've been here for more than a year.
Continue reading - Current Employee, more than 5 years★★★★★
Not what it used to be but still solid
Nov 21, 2021 - Solution Consultant in Madison, WIRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
On our way to being the next Salesforce or Oracle but with better work life balance
Cons
too much change to keep on top of
Continue reading - Former Contractor, less than 1 year★★★★★
Great company and great culture just be aware that it’s growing and with growth comes change.
Nov 15, 2017 - Anonymous Contractor in London, EnglandRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Amazing people and making a genuine difference for customers. You’re well looked after and a work life balance is promoted from the get go.
Cons
Huge amounts of change and shift in culture as organisation grows. It’s no longer a scrappy start up but an enterprise company and with that status comes a new set of challenges.
Continue reading - Current Employee, more than 1 year★★★★★
Pros
Medical insurance, dental insurance, ESPP Some pleasant employees if you work out of the Melbourne and San Francisco office. The rest of the global offices have some of the most unethical and moralless human beings I ever encountered. Work/life balance is great if you work out of the Melbourne and SF office. Anywhere else you need to take conference calls at the wee hours.
Cons
Weak 401k No bonus plan for low-level employees Some pleasant employees if you work out of the Melbourne and San Francisco office. The rest of the global offices have some of the most unethical and moralless human beings I ever encountered. Work/life balance is great if you work out of the Melbourne and SF office. Anywhere else you need to take conference calls at the wee hours.
- Current Employee, more than 5 years★★★★★
Good WLB, Cloudy waters
Jun 26, 2022 - Senior Software EngineerRecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
Zendesk has extremely solid work/life balance and the managers I've worked with are flexible with working hours. The work I do is solid and there aren't unrealistic expectations for productivity.
Cons
Overall the future is cloudy - upper management hasn't been able to make its vision clear at all, and the compensation/promotion process is opaque. Projects get re-scoped halfway through and sent off in a different direction.
Continue reading - Current Employee, less than 1 year★★★★★
Pros
Great company to work for. Lovely offices in a great location. Management style is very nice and allows you to challenge yourself to progress all the time. The culture of the company leads to great teams and a great working atmosphere. Excellent work / life balance too which is very important for me. I can see myself working for Zendesk for a very long time if things stay as they are.
Cons
There are no cons to working at Zendesk that I can see so far.
Continue reading - Current Employee, less than 1 year★★★★★
Company Not "Buttoned Up" and Struggling with its 2nd Act!
Oct 10, 2017 - Anonymous Employee in San Francisco, CARecommendCEO ApprovalBusiness OutlookPros
People are friendly and there is a strong, almost familial culture. In that vein there is a strong respect for family and workhat vein there is a strong respect for family and workhat vein there is a strong respect for family and work life balance relative to other tech companies in the bay area. While it varies by group working hours in the office typically start at between 9-10am. And most people leave between 5-6pm so there are very few folks around past 6:00pm. Compensation is generally lower than at other tech firms. But it is probably fair given the number of hours worked.
Cons
CHALLENGES MOVING UP MARKET The company is going through a challenging transition as it moves from its early success being a help desk software platform for startups and smaller businesses to one that is now focused on moving up market and selling customer service software to larger more established businesses. Zendesk has promised Wall Street that it will achieve $1B in revenue by 2020. This is an aggressive goal that has put a lot of short term stress on the business (and correspondingly its employees) each quarter as it figures out how to live up to the promise. To achieve $1B in my mind means fully committing to moving up market and selling to enterprise buyers. This has been hard for the company as it is requires the company to be the type of business that the original Zendesk was trying to disrupt. As Mikkel the CEO writes in his book Startupland "we shared a healthy disdain for the traditional enterprise software sales model. The big platforms, the expensive salespeople with the expense accounts, the semireligious conferences, the PowerPoint software, the locked-in relationships". This move up market requires that requires the company to change a lot of what made it successful early on. The company needs to build new muscles in sales and marketing to support enterprise which requires new skills, new processes, and often times new people. This has resulted in multiple reorganizations (or "evolutions" as they are now calling them) in sales and marketing that have been fairly disruptive and caused a lot of angst for people in terms of having clear roles and responsibilities. LACK OF URGENCY The work life balance mentioned as a pro also means that the company does not move as quickly as other places. And as a result there is not a lot of "urgency" within the company to get stuff done quickly. This can be frustrating for those who do have urgency and are trying to push others to have the same mindset. NOT A DATA/ANALYTICS CULTURE The company has historically not been one that relied significantly on data/metrics to make decisions. It's always done things by the seat of its pants and is not particularly buttoned up. As a result there is not a strong data/analytics culture within the company and the corresponding data/analytics infrastructure including reporting and systems reflects that. So often the data required to make decisions is not available, incomplete, or simply inaccurate. The company is trying to change this but it requires a lot of work to undo years of neglect. So for folks that want to have reliable data to make decisions Zendesk may not be the best fit. DIVERSITY & CAREER ADVANCEMENT While the company has initiatives around diversity the company is still not very diverse at the senior and mid level management positions and there seems to be a bias for younger employees. This seems to be ingrained into the companies recruiting culture. In fact two of its most senior and long tenured minority Vice Presidents just announced their departure October 2017. The company does have a history of promoting young employees who are willing to work hard and go the extra mile. There are at least 3 VPs that have been promoted in the last year that are under 30. Many of the older senior leaders are being pushed out.
Continue readingThanks for your thorough review! You make some really interesting points and we’d love to chat about them some more, particularly your comments around diversity and how we develop as an organization. One thing we should point out is that there are zero VPs under the age of 30. Please reach out to Fidelma to discuss more.
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