Q&A With Ziff Davis Employees

Somewhat. Deadlines are the main thing that may reduce flexibility due to the need for getting things done. Otherwise pretty flexible.

It depends on the subsidiary you work for. The NY main office is cramped for anyone that is used to the West Coast vibe.

Your work tends to merge with your social life somewhat. People seem to enjoy hanging out with one another.

Medical, Dental, 401k, Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and Flex Spending Account.

It depends on the subsidiary you work for.

Some subsidiaries allow it, but the general culture is to get to the office if you can.

They seem to be doing quite well following a M&A strategy. However, I don't think this is a sustainable growth trajectory. They need to invest in their people and new products more.

For sales and marketing, great. For engineers, not so great.

The culture seems to encourage the exclusion of technical staff from planning and strategy meetings. Technical staff are encouraged to keep their head down, even too much, to deliver on promises they often are not involved in making. This tends to lead to burnout and some turnover, especially given they don't offer much of a bonus plan or equity for people that aren't managers. If you demand long hours and hard work you must provide better incentives or you will continue to lose your best people. The cheaper option would be to change the culture and allow technical staff, in particular senior individual contributors, a seat at the table when any planning is being done, or promises are being made.

Their businesses are somewhat fragmented, operating more as an umbrella corp of sorts. How innovative of a team you wind up on will depend on which of their properties you are employed by.

Once per year, sometime in late Q1, you are given a review and told what, if any, base increase there will be. You must make your case for any increase you believe you are owed 6 months in advance or you will miss the boat.

Sales, marketing and content creators.

They're all really cool people for the most part. It's a hip place to work.

They grow through mergers and acquisitions. I believe their Ookla group is growing the fastest last I heard.

It's a very fast paced work environment. They have been aggressively growing through mergers and acquisitions. At times it means the employees have to pick up extra slack.

Ziff-Davis is a publisher, so they tend to focus on advertising or related business models. For example, SEO, ad segments, or the sale of awards similar to JD Power. As a result, their content, marketing and sales teams have a lot of influence. Engineers must recognize they are not the top dogs and must work with these teams if they want success.