Wayfair

1.0

12 Jan 2020

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

Many of the Operations managers in the field are doing their best to take care of associates despite a lack of support from the company.

Cons

Where to begin... I'd like to say that the chaos is specific to the HR team but it is not. On the HR team the leadership is inexperienced with highly questionable ethics & a broken moral compass. Additionally, their understanding of and regard for the law is completely absent. They then expect others to follow suit – but don’t even think about questioning it even though having the “ability to challenge” is a core value… doing so will result in you being blacklisted. Poor decisions are being made every day. It's a culture of intimidation - they only know how to manage by fear. Every review cycle 10% of the team has to go - but that's if they haven't already quit. The average tenure of someone on the HR team is about 6 months. Don't let them fool you by saying everyone is new because of growth - it's because the HR turnover rate is well over 50% annually. There's no bench strength, no continuity plan... just "get it done or else". During my short time there I traveled all but 2 weeks - "work life balance" is a myth. The pay is so far below market that it’s often impossible to fill roles which means the slack falls to you. Don’t even think of asking for help unless you want it to come back as a negative during your performance review. If you enjoy recognition for a job well done you won't find that at Wayfair, conversely if you like being called out publicly when you mess up then Wayfair is the place for you! The Wayfair ship is sinking and they’re not going to throw anyone a life line so do yourself a favor and take a job elsewhere… literally ANYWHERE is better than Wayfair.

5.0

12 May 2017

Software engineer

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

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.

915

Wayfair Response

First, I wanted to thank you for providing feedback. Second, I am very sorry to hear that your experience was far from ideal. I know it can be hard to give feedback if you feel management is the problem, but leadership would love to learn about these issues to refine the Wayfair employee experience. We do try to create an open and transparent environment; one thing we’ve started doing is department-wide anonymous surveys. This has been helpful in identifying issues where people don’t feel comfortable speaking up for whatever reason and pinpoint where any issues may exist. As you noted, the company is growing very quickly - our Engineering team alone has grown tenfold over the past five years. I won’t pretend we get it right all the time, but we do aim to scale our teams and our systems reasonably to meet the rapid growth of our business, and we rely on employee feedback to refine these processes. To that end, we’ve put a lot of time and energy into our interview process. And, we closely track our voluntary and involuntary attrition rates to make sure we are keeping high employee retention and so that we can immediately nip any potential issues in the bud. For Wayfair Labs, we’ve made huge strides since the beginning of this program, and our average success rate is now over 90%, with several classes at 100%. We also run management trainings on giving, receiving and soliciting feedback. In these trainings - and in general - we encourage respect for all teammates and partners, communication and collaboration, and we try create opportunities for people to take on new challenges. I am very excited about the work we’re doing to solve tough challenges and there’s an exciting opportunity for our employees to do big things – our goal is to build a team that feels encouraged and empowered to do so. I’m very sorry you didn’t have the experience we try to cultivate. Once again, thank you for this feedback.

Major Disappointment - Human Resources Wayfair Employee Review

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