The open plan office is fun, effective, and funky, and the employees I met were extremely pleasant and competent - except for the recruiter, who was the sole - but considerable - stain on the experience.
I was referred by a friend to the Tech Pubs manager, who met me for a short discussion at a nearby Starbucks. We hit it off very well, and a day later, I was invited to interview at the company's offices in Redwood City.
I met with a product architect, who told me after my interview and my explanation of SOAP and Restful concepts that "You're the one! This was great, and I look forward to working with you."
I met with product managers and tech support - groups I'd be supporting with my documentation. The interview questions were pretty tough, and the exchange was really fruitful - some good replies to my questions about the company and it's vision, strategy, and approach to working with and communicating with customers.
Unfortunately, that was the end of the good experience. No one from HR met with me during my in-person interview. In fact, no one from their hiring team was around that day at all. I got a nice e-mail reply to my note thanking them for the interview, and at first I was very confident, with phrases like "very interested" and "please let us know if you are entertaining any other offers" in the e-mail reply from the recruiter. She let me know that there was one person left to interview for the position, and that I'd be hearing an answer from Zuora within a week.
_Six weeks later_, after checking in with the reciter by voicemail and e-mail once a week at least, I finally got a short and confused note from Zuora that said I'd been passed over for someone with more experience. It was one of three times the recruiter bothered to get back to me when I inquired about the interview process. Personally, I think that's disrespectful, and there were several contradictory statements in the handful of communications from the recruiter. Too bad - they missed out on a great writer and motivated worker!