Pros
Shopzilla is a company with a lot of problems to solve and that's a good thing. It has great market share in an area of intense competition (shopping comparison) but it is at the point where the company as a whole needs to come up with innovative solutions and possibly make some large structural changes to the business model. The reason I've placed this in the Pro section is because change like that means there's a huge amount of opportunity for smart hard working people to solve those problems and have a large measurable impact on the bottom line. I believe that most of the recent negative reviews posted here are from a couple of individuals posting multiple times and should be taken with a grain of salt for multiple reasons: 1. To compete with companies doing the same work at lower costs Shopzilla took several steps including downsizing to smaller development and operations teams, outsourcing low level development and operations tasks to India, and taking on some large infrastructure projects to move on to lower cost technologies. The first two steps have obviously angered some people, but they were necessary steps required of any modern mid-sized software company with strong competition. 2. With the recent change in ownership came a re-evaluation of priorities, teams were switched around there was restructuring etc. Many people are no longer working on projects and ideas that they had become emotionally invested in. Obviously that makes people grumbly, but the structural changes were necessary and have opened up tons of opportunity for those who are willing to take it. 3. Most of the project managers at Shopzilla are female, the majority of the engineers and developers are male. There are some engineers and developers who have a very hard time showing respect for the intelligence and contributions of their female project managers and that is a terrible shame (for the sake of transparency, I am male). The gist of what I'm trying to say is that Shopzilla is a company that has a huge opportunity to grow, and the smart hard working people that show up with enthusiasm and take the company to where it needs to be are going to see great returns on their contributions. What Shopzilla is not, is a place where you show up from 11 to 5 (if you show up at all) eat your free lunch, check in a bit of code, and then collect raises and promotions every year. All of my Shopzilla coworkers are fun, vibrant, welcoming people. I have never experienced this clique-ness that I see mentioned multiple times, I have never felt socially excluded in any way from any level of the organization nor have I seen coworkers acting clique towards others or excluding anybody. Again I believe that many of the reviews here are from just a couple different former employees who had especially negative experiences (you can kind of tell from the similar usages of terrible grammar and punctuation, and the frequent repetition of the same complaints). Shopzilla is by no means perfect, but it is a great place to work with solid benefits and compensation and I personally am excited about where the company is headed.
Cons
It seems like the senior management team works hard to elicit and respond to feedback from employees, however many of the company wide initiatives seem to emerge from oblique secretive meetings proceeding from conceptualization into implementation in a top-down unilateral manner. While within my own team I feel like I have many opportunities to provide input, ideas, and direction it seems like some employees don't get the same opportunity to influence the larger products that they work on. Like I have said I think there is a huge opportunity for those looking to roll up their sleeves and contribute, but its not entirely obvious where those enthusiastic workers should turn when they have great ideas/solutions.
