Nothing Zen about Zendesk - Senior Manager Zendesk Employee Review

1.0
12 Nov 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people at your level are kind, thoughtful, and smart.

Cons

Zendesk used to be a great place to work. Now, led by a CEO from a sales and venture capital background, the company has stripped away incentives for employees, both in terms of monetary gain and professional fulfillment. Employees are no longer offered RSUs, bonuses have dropped below the 10% range, and performance evaluations are based on percentile ranking. Even those rated "above excellent" often receive minimal rewards. Growth opportunities are limited, and there's a noticeable lack of commitment to DEI, resulting in fewer opportunities for women, especially women of color, and minimal representation at the senior leadership level. This has led to tone-deaf messaging and microaggressions from leadership when addressing employees from diverse backgrounds. Zendesk as a product has also lost its vision. There is little investment in innovation or in diversifying the Zendesk portfolio. The company’s strategy seems to revolve around acquiring startups, moving operations to lower-cost markets, and focusing on short-term profit for an IPO. Despite the extensive efforts employees put into integrating these new acquisitions onto the Zendesk platform, they see little benefit from their hard work—even senior directors are not offered substantial RSU packages. Given all the incredible companies out there, I would not recommend Zendesk as a place to work. Especially if you are at a more senior level.

Explore other reviews about Zendesk

5.0
4 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great culture, good work life balance, excellent team mates, Everyone is focused on extremely bright solutions-oriented collaboration.

Cons

Many systems to learn, but this is true for any large company.

2.0
12 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people you work directly with are nice and the unlimited PTO was nice, and everyone was very chill about you taking time off when you needed.

Cons

It used to be a pretty good place to work but then after Zendesk got acquired everything slowly got worse and worse culture-wise. There were also multiple layoffs and re-orgs that caused a lot of confusion and cognitive debt, all the while management was still expecting more productivity somehow???? With layoffs practically every year and veiled threats about having to use AI more (more how?! There was no direction), working there kind of felt like working with a gun to my head.

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