Got reached out by a recruiter sometime back and wanted to see if it is worth considering? I have heard mixed things about their culture and diversity, and saw negative stuff on Glassdoor. Any current or ex employees that can comment?
Same, then the recruiter disappeared. :)
Very, very stupid name.
Seconded
Nvidia, the gold standard of company names
Houzz is a career dead end. Eng team is run by old time people who got promoted just because they had been there longer, despite being technically incompetent. Founders abuse the prospect of IPO to keep people, a lot of people wanna leave but can't because they don't have money to exercise their stock options.
I had the weirdest interview process with them about a role I was reached out on. One guy complained that he was sick of interviewing people who are sourced!! I went along with it as I was intrigued but I had no interest in working for them. All in I spoke with 5 people there and each seemed to be talking to me about a different role! Eventually I told the recruiter I had something else and to remove me from the process. I got a call a week later from an external recruiter for the same role!! Another thing was they all went on about the fact they might ipo soon as a reason to work there. I learned from my experience that the company is a mess.
In general I would say stay away from Houzz. CEO is running it to the ground and there are a lot of unhappy people interviewing to get out. Lots of veterans have left
what? I remembered the time when one can use Houzz’s offer to negotiate with G. the good old days.
Glassdoor stuff is pretty outdated/only really talks about the sales side of working at Houzz. Eng wise I’d say it’s not as bad as everyone makes it out to be. The same issues arise at every other company.
I have heard that the entire engineering org is just Chinese and they talk in Chinese at work?!? There are almost no white, Hispanic, black engineers? Is that true?
Hmmm... I would say the ‘entire’ team is Chinese, this assumption is a little bit offensive. But there is many asian descendants SWE at Houzz.
Houzz has a pretty strong engineering team. Some old timers have left who were at the company for many years and got impatient but a lot more people have joined recently as well
It doesn’t answer my question about culture though! I have heard that the entire engineering org is Chinese and they talk to each other in Chinese and the only reason non Chinese like Indians are there is due to too many stock options that they can’t buy?!? How is a non Chinese supposed to fit in? Also recruiter told me they have a 2 year cliff for RSUs. That is extremely absurd, shows insecurity of a company in being able to retain employees organically.
Sounds like my org at SF
There are certainly many Chinese engineers but there are other Indian and white engineers too. A number were recent hires so it's definitely not stock options that's keeping them. RSUs - yes. It's 25% vesting per year. Management doesn't like people jumping companies every year and tries not to hire those that do
One of my friends had interviewed there a few months back. He told me that he walked in the office and he literally just saw Asian engineers! Non Asian employees are like less than 5%? Is that true? I call BS on the vesting cycle. Everybody jumps companies in the valley, why don’t other startup like stripe, Airbnb have 2 year cliffs? I am sure there founders have similar concerns. Such cliffs show more insecurity in being able to retain employees imo ...
Nope