Zonal Reviews

Potential to improve departmental collaboration

*Zonal is not a software development company, it’s a customer success company with a software function bolted on as a feature factory somewhere along the way. The customer dictates absolutely everything and the result is total disorganisation, unplanned work needing to be done ASAP and a complete breakdown of proper processes. Burnout is very real and every day is stressful. *Proper communication does not exist here such that when releases are due the integration tests don't exist and therefore haven't been done because nobody is responsible for joining the dots. Frequently key items are missing and releases are either delayed or, more often than not, pushed out the door anyway to the extreme disappointment of paying customers who were given promises of functional software that would entirely meet their requirements. *Zonal does not care enough to do anything about the resulting and well known long term low levels of morale, so staff churn is also very high. We often find out that recent hires have already left the business before the end of their probationary period. Zonal cannot keep a CTO or other senior hires for more than 6 months on average. It’s mayhem. *The CEO recently addressed rumours of redundancies by saying that’s all they were and that wasn’t on their agenda, then they announced shortly afterwards that redundancies are needed because of unsustainable investment levels. The U turn by the CEO was shocking and the explanation provided for it was incredibly weak. Redundancy numbers are on the high end of those that warrant a 30-day collective consultation and consequently the working atmosphere is, as you can imagine, extremely negatively and depressed. *There have been no pay rises for almost two years across all departments. We were told by the CEO recently that they were hopeful that there would be pay reviews by Q2, then the next email they sent was to announce the redundancies so that’s not happening now. As for profitability, that would be a product of appropriate planning, accurate budgeting and realistic forecasting but because the board have proven they’re routinely 100% incapable of that, profit sharing was stopped a few years ago along with the annual bonus. *Zonal’s score here rightly continues downwards together with an increasingly well deserved vote of no confidence in its CEO who is nowhere to be found presently along with senior management and the Chief of Staff - the very individual who ought to be very much present through sweeping redundancy measures. Without drastic changes at board and senior management levels and the removal of the Chief of Staff, the only guarantees now are further cost cutting and redundancy measures to counter the effects of continuing poor management and woefully inadequate 'leadership'.