Zoox reviews

People who are rude, abrasive, and difficult to work with reside at the top, and they hire similar folks with limited social skills and robot-like empathy-lacking behaviors. People will throw you under the bus to save themselves, and the culture breeds this kind of toxicity. I have never faced a more strange and concerning group of individuals. I’ve witnessed yelling in meetings, bosses openly mocking staff members' performance to their teams and meetings, and using it as a punch line, and borderline witch-hunt behavior from those they are not happy with. People would regularly go to me because my manager was known for her bad attitude, and people were frankly too afraid to communicate with her. And that was seen as a normal thing to do because those are the individuals in power. Someone in a similar position lasted just a few months after they were publicly screamed out by the organization leader, and (“allegedly”) rumors swirled that they were handed a separation by HR to keep quiet. It’s also clear that they are trying to clear house as the company moves on to its next steps. You’ll mysteriously see coworkers vanish (get fired) every month or so, which is concerning for a company of this size. I have never worked anywhere like this before, and hope to never again.

However - if you are not in an engineering role your career will likely be belittled and overlooked. Like many tech companies - the technical jobs are king here. Upper management doesn't really understand operations focused roles. The HR department is very toxic and cliquey. If you're not part of the OG crew you do feel to be a bit of an outsider. The folks who have been around for the longest & are closer with the founder are favored. There are a few people in senior roles purely due to tenure and not ability or qualifications. This causes a lot of problems and just a very inefficient department. Many talented people have come through and left because they simply weren't allowed to do their jobs well. You feel like you can't make progress and like you're trying to achieve your KPIs with your hands tied behind your back. Many roles do not even have clear descriptions or KPIs (hence why I think upper management doesn't invest in or understand these roles).