Pros
Met some great people there, who made life bearable.
Cons
The salary was pittance. Nepotism was rife in the time I was there. Those who were close to the management, seemed to be the ones getting the promotions. Hard work was not rewarded. Achieving the bonus became more and more difficult. Opinions were not appreciated. This company tried to enforce American 'customs' into the German market. Vorkasse was removed from the website, talk about not knowing your customer! A complete shambles. I worked here for nearly three years and gave up when all the good staff left. It was a learning experience, one that I will not forget! I now work in an environment where one is treated as a human who can make suggestions, changes and not treated like another number. All CSS staff are like the foot soldiers of the company. The Wayfair machine is something that wants to mould all its staff into mindless robots with dollar signs in their eyes.
Pros
Smart colleagues tackling interesting, business relevant problems.
Cons
Long-term projects sometimes significantly modified in response to short-term business needs.
Pros
Wayfair is a fantastic company if you're a software engineer who's looking to keep quiet, and not speak up when management treats you like garbage. And it excels at finding leaders who are willing to go the extra mile to be untrustworthy and make you feel like your job isn't safe (and for real, it's not).
Cons
Let's talk. The company has been growing like crazy, and one thing that was never thought about was "can we actually hire at a sustainable rate, and scale accordingly?" The answer was no on both counts. Software engineers at Wayfair have a history of disappearing. People who enter labs have an especially low success rate (70% make it through, and less than 50% last a whole year). It's basically their way to run people through a burnout gauntlet, and see who survives. And then you have the stories of the people who come in to work and are just asked to resign. You'll see hints of it here on Glassdoor if you dig, and it's even worse than what you read. They actually gathered all the engineers for a big meeting at the beginning of this year. And they said that they were sorry that people felt scared and were sad that people felt like management didn't care. Which is exactly how we felt. They promised that their door was open, and they were going to work hard to set things right. One person out of 500 stood up and asked a really cutting question. AND THEN THEY FIRED HIM! And there were 3 completely different official reasons given about it. It's crazy. The leaders also started up an engineering meeting to keep everyone on the same page and answer anonymous questions. One time someone asked why we couldn't get snow days off, because it was tough to shovel for 3 to 4 hours and still work an 8 hour day. So the leaders proceeded to talk down to us and reprimand us for even thinking about asking a question like this. Turnover has been high over the past year, and the best people are leaving. This worries management, but they still have no idea that the problem is actually them creating a terrible environment. So if you're a good person who cares about the person next to you and leaving things better than you found them, don't bother applying here. But if you're not, and you just want to keep your head down and not question anything, then this is the perfect place for you. And if that's what you want, Wayfair gets 5 stars. Amazing career opportunities if you want to have the same job forever. Incredible senior management that value untrustworthiness. A fantastic culture of watching people next to you disappear. It's truly a perfect company.
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