Great culture, solid core business. Unfortunately, lots of wasted resources and energy
Pros
The People org at Zillow is great. The company invests in its people with strong L+D. They are intentional about the culture and lean into their core values for recruiting, evaluations and every day employee engagement. It is not perfect, but the intent and investment is there. Pay is not top of the market, but it is good, and benefits are strong (DTO, good health insurance, good maternity/paternity, etc). The core, agent business is solid and almost bullet proof now that Zillow has such strong awareness and large audience. When the housing market struggles, agents spend with Zillow to maximize their opportunity to win business. When the housing market is strong, agents spend with Zillw because they have the money and want to win more.
Cons
Leadership tends to chase the shiny object, and allocate more resources than deserved to moonshots and ideas that look great in paper but have no solid executional plans. Among leadership and across the company, talkers and dreamers are rewarded and elevated, but there is no enough appreciation for doers and operational people that can land a strategy in solid tactics and implementation. Therefore, lots of effort and resources go into poorly scoped and planned projects/initiatives that end up taking more resources than initially thought and end up failing. As resources are limited, and a lot goes to the dreammy, poorly scoped ideas, there is under-investment on the core, proven businesses, and the foundational and operational work to make things more efficient and effective, leaving a lot of money on the table.