Zalando- any thoughts?
I’ve gotten an offer at Zalando for a lead PM role. I wasn’t actively job-searching, but the company/product seem pretty neat/has a lot of potential to grow. :) Any thoughts on Zalando in Berlin? Any Blind members currently work there, or worked there previously? Good or bad idea to leave Amazon for Zalando? I’ve been with Amazon several years, if that’s helpful. Thanks all!
Thanks- really helpful! What made you leave? The TC?
Personal reasons, benefits that come with a huge global company (there's more places you can relocate to), and to some degree TC and wanting to have a big well-know company in my CV even if it's worse in so many ways. In Zalando, people often refer to Amazon as the main competitor, and joke that they would leave to the competition; it's kind of perceived as the next natural step up in one's career. It sucks, because Zalando is a far, far better workplace for an engineer's everyday experiences, you learn a lot more, systems are better designed, everything is better except TC, scale, notoriety and stability. I know it was the right choice for me to switch, pragmatically, but it still makes me sad.
Ah here we go. Got an offer as well. Thinking about it now. Joining martech?
What did you do?
Still not sure if I accept it. Have 2 more weeks to think about it. Germany isn’t my “dream country”
I worked there for a couple of years and I agree with the fact that the tech teams are amazing. You can have a lot of impact and the product teams are nicely set up as well. Salary is not the best, but depending where you’re coming from Berlin is really cheap too. I‘m working for Booking in Amsterdam now and have to say that I miss Z quite a lot!
Could you please share the hierarchy in zalando for tech roles ? How is executive principal engineer different from principal engineer? What Could be expected tc for this level for a candidate with 12 yeo?
Same here, couldn’t agree more. It’s very good company and tech teams are amazing
How does the TC look like for a lead pm at zalando? I know Berlin is cheap so not fair comparing to the US.
TC or GTFO
How is the culture for the non germans and specially for Asian engineers? How is the work life balance and are engineer able to play around with tech stack?
Did you join? I have few questions about the nature of the interview rounds - commercial/technical, etc. Can you please shed some light here?
There are only two downsides to Zalando: lower TC and the everpresent looming threat of company financial failure. The culture, WLB and tech is amazing, advanced, positive, refreshing, inspiring. In non-tech roles there's a lot of buzzword bingo bullshit but the tech work is really awesome. The stock takes scary dips every so often and mass layoffs have happened a couple times (about a year ago, ~400 people, nearly the whole marketing department, was let go very suddenly). Haven't heard of this happening in tech departments (Zalando likes to pretend tech is everywhere and isn't a separate part of the company anymore, but it's not quite true).