Pluspunten
Good benefits (salary, healthcare, 401k w/ match, company parties), nice view from office, friendly people, good work life balance.
Minpunten
Don't be fooled by the snazzy marketing materials, pictures of team outings, or talk about their products "saving lives". The truth is, we're all in trouble if anyone relies on their software to save lives. This division of ZOLL writes software that targets the EMS and Fire industry. By some stretch of the imagination, some of their products *could* assist in the process of saving a life, but that is mostly just a marketing ploy. The parent company, ZOLL Medical, manufactures medical devices that do save lives, but the software division is just the disappointing stepchild. There is little to no synergy or collaboration across these two divisions. They may as well be completely independent companies but ZOLL insists they are “one”. People barely talk across teams within the same building. The online platform is a major failure to launch that management doesn't seem to grasp how to make successful... and they have been trying hard... for years. Or at least talking about it in meetings. They want it to be all of these things, but no one is willing to invest in making the necessary changes to bring the platform into the modern age to support the business’s desires. The tech stack is old, fragile, hard to maintain, and the products themselves look like they are from someone’s under graduate senior project. You've got smart, capable people who can do it, but you just don't have them in positions where they can take action. Bad development decisions are never fixed. Instead, they are perpetuated over and over until they spread throughout all areas of the platform like a cancer. Ideas are discussed ad nauseam but never followed through on or implemented because the effort is simply too great, too disruptive, or there just isn't any buy in from the business to change anything because there is no perceived product value. Every product team works in its own isolated silo and coordinating small changes across teams is a colossal and often failed effort. Product integration is an afterthought. Products break each other often. Navigating through the different product pages makes this obvious. Upper management is either blissfully unaware of the state of chaos and disarray that the R&D organization/online platform has been in for years, or they just don't care because the business is still profitable. The product teams wallow and drown in processes that prevent them from making any real progress on anything innovative or substantive. The term “agile” is thrown around a lot here because it's trendy. In their quest to find agile they have found paralysis and indecision. Much of the new greenfield product development is outsourced to India, or simply purchased from other companies and resold/rebranded. This is likely because the amount of effort expended on developing new things in house for the current platform and with the current staff is inversely proportional to the actual value that the end result would provide. Culturally speaking, ZOLL seems to be a tight knit group of people. This is, in part, because many people have been there for years. Even decades. Which is also part of the problem. Some people have simply been there for far too long. They've overstayed their welcome, but the company hasn't kicked them out. Their ideas, attitudes, and skill sets have become obsolete as the tech industry has forged ahead. But, for some reason, they are still allowed hang on like leeches while retaining their highly paid positions, polluting the culture and the code base as they see fit. Meanwhile, the actual skilled and talented people have jumped ship. ZOLL did have a round of layoffs a couple years ago, and surprisingly they kept some of the worst offenders around! In terms of career advancement, in 3 years I haven't seen anyone within R&D promoted. I have worked at some small companies and some big companies, and all of them have issues. Nowhere is perfect. But I have never worked at one where making progress and advancing the bread and butter product stack has been *this* dysfunctional, arduous, and downright painful. ZOLL has some very talented, smart, and passionate people. These people want to be part of the solution and want to make the products better because they believe in the mission. All you need to do is let them.