Zones Reviews

Pros

great benefits, food in office 3 days a week on average. generous pay and compensation. work hard play hard environment.

Cons

onboarding/ training process could be better

Pros

Opportunity to learn and progress. It is a good company to start with as they hire in at minimum experience levels and have a robust sales training program.

Cons

Executive leadership in some departments drive down morale. Zones has become the kind of place where the individual does not matter.

Pros

Managers did not micromanage and held weekly touch point calls. I had a good work/home balance with the opportunity to work from home at least once per week. Great co-workers and culture while in the office. Health benefits were decent. PTO plan was good (use it or lose it plan, not accrued).

Cons

Needed more consistence processes/documentation/direction to support projects (they were working on that). A company where Sales gets most praise. Quite a bit of blame was put on others for initial Sales errors without Sales support post sale.

Pros

Honestly, the only Pro I can think of is that they have two XBoxes in the break room.

Cons

I was recommended to work her by a friend that touted how awesome this company was to work for. I was promised a managerial role over 25 employees. In the first two weeks they revised my job description 4 times. At the end of the two weeks, they decided that I need to be a Night Shift manager. I have a kid and a wife. I did not agree to such a change in my schedule, but it was either that or lose my job. 8 weeks later I was able to rejoin days, but found out at that my role had changed again. Instead of supervising 25 people, I was now a "team lead" of 3 people. They made sure to have me oversee the worst performing workers they had. After 3 weeks, they questioned why the scores of my tiny team of poor performers were bad and they demoted me. Let me be clear, it takes longer than 3 weeks to really turn a poor performer around. It takes a lot of time and effort. No other team lead was able to turn these workers around after more than 6 months. After a few months, someone spread a rumor around the office that I was saying very inappropriate things around the office. There was no evidence or proof of this, it was completely hearsay. In response to this I was screamed at in an office for around 30 minutes. I reached out to HR and they said they would "Start an investigation". There was never a real resolution from management about how I was treated. And to be honest I wasn't the only employee being treated poorly by the upper management. I don't know anyone who was happy to work for the Office 365 department. People were being threatened to be fired simply because they talked to HR. I've heard one of the members of upper management talking about how he mad he was that an employee went to HR in the middle of the office. This is by far the most toxic workplace I have ever had the displeasure of being around. I quit in February and I will never look back.

Pros

Company is in Auburn, so traffic isn't as bad as Seattle or Bellevue/Redmond.

Cons

Zones is a company where the financial bottom line is the only thing that matters. There is absolutely zero loyalty to employees, with people frequently being fired who have worked at the company between 10-20 years. They fired over 400 India staff in 2018 with no notice, moved those jobs to Pakistan so they could save money, then claimed their increased bottom line was due to higher revenue instead of through savings from paying less to the new Pakistan crew. Because you frequently need to train and deal with your Pakistani counterparts, there’s a very real chance you’re training your replacement, as opposed to strengthening your own position. Your job is NOT safe at Zones, ever. Zones is technologically roughly 5-10 years behind their competitors, and only now (in 2020) have begun taking steps to modernize their ailing techno-infrastructure. People who come to Zones are appalled by how far behind the company is in tech compared to comparable companies in the field. There are few opportunities for career advancement due to the way the company is structured. That’s not to say there are zero opportunities, but as is often the case in Corporate America, it’s more about who you know and have rapport with than it is about getting the best person for the job. Upper management is deaf to the complaints of the employees, and though they claim transparency, very little actually changes over time. Company pay is abysmally low compared to competitors, with Zones offering roughly 40-60% of standard industry pay for comparable jobs elsewhere. This is not an exaggeration for dramatic effect. The COO flat-out admitted to the company in meetings their low compensation choices were purposeful, and instead chose to praise the unseen perks, such as not having to commute as far to get to work. It’s hard to retain fresh talent when a job half an hour further down the road pays quite literally twice as much. Management has a fairly high turnover rate, with new managers coming on and being tasked with the whims of upper management, while not listening to the experience of boots-on-the-ground employees in the trenches. To be fair, the managers at Zones do their best, but are ridiculously overburdened with tasks and responsibilities. You couldn’t pay me enough to work in middle management at this company. All of that said, the job location really is off the beaten path, with the headquarters located in Auburn, WA. Travel to and from is relatively painless compared to working at larger tech firms further down the road. As with all companies, there are some shining stars and great people who work there. Still, that doesn’t make up for the significant lack of pay, lack of upward mobility, and lack of treating employees as their most important resource. You’re a cog in the wheel of progress at Zones, and that’s it. Caveat Emptor.

Pros

Paid on time.Good place as a first job out of college, or with high school and some experience.

Cons

Sometimes bonuses are paid out a month late. However, the real negative here is the workload, the lack of respect, the micromanagent, the daily morning briefings with managers, presentations by vendors, low base pay with an exceptionally high quota. The list goes on. The recent firings and furloughs have left the Account Managers scrambling for help / resources - the cloud specialists and solution architects are so spread thin, they sometimes take 5 days just to respond to your email for help on a solution. Employees are not respected. I'll be out of there as soon as I find another job, and that's a sentiment shared by many account managers and cloud specialists at Zones.