Pros
Pros: 1. Professional experience. Working at Wayfair certainly does arm you with a vast amount of professional experience that you may not have gained elsewhere (though it is tough to truly say). They assign a level of responsibility to new hires that, while it is flattering, is in most cases undeniably irresponsible. However, this forces the employees to jump into their roles and take on challenges, and therefore leads to an enormous amount of professional experience gained in a rather short amount of time. 2. Fun workplace environment. Of course, I have to address the super cool office. Kegs, board games, video games, arcade games, no offices or cubicles - it’s an abundance of fun, a carefully selected collection of amenities in order to charm the pants off of millennials...and it works!
Cons
Cons: 1. Transparency. For a company that prides themselves in being so transparent, I came to find that they often were not. Management was hush-hush about big decisions, sneaky about their wrongdoings, and dishonest about the state of the department. 2. Communication. Wayfair makes a substantial effort to impress upon their employees how important communication is. However, it became quickly apparent that there is a major lack of communication in this company. Our management could not communicate simple things to other departments that were absolutely key, such as letting our business partners know that we were totally swamped, etc... The whole company needs a major training session on how to effectively communicate in both verbal and written forms. 3. Training/mentorship. My manager started a few weeks before I was brought on and it could not have been more apparent. I came to quickly realize that the training and mentorship within Wayfair is so poor because so few people have been there over 1 year, therefore the company is filled with managers who...don’t know how to manage. It seems comical almost, but it’s the honest truth. My personal experience in this area was consistently being told I was doing things wrong, and never being taught how to do them right. It was nitpicky, it was petty, it was constant scrutiny, it was a true sign of a flat out inability to lead. And even the most senior managers in my department were clueless when it came to leadership, or else they would have stepped in and made some real change. That is not a reflection of proper training, that is not a reflection of proper mentorship, that is the result of hiring managers that are under qualified and that lack simple skills needed to truly guide and encourage personal growth. 4. Work-Life Balance. There simply is none. Even though they throw company parties and don’t provide laptops to take home and work on, in my experience all anyone could ever possibly think about was this job. It completely took over my personal life due to the immense stress I was under, and I can say the same for others in my department. The workload was so crushing that I think back on it and it seems unreal. 5. Salary/Promotions. You can read about it the hundreds of reviews here...the pay is embarrassing, frankly. With the amount of work they assign and the amount of responsibility they dole out to barely-out-of-college employees, they should feel ashamed of themselves for paying so little. Promotions are unfair and often offensive, because in my department, they were so clearly based off of personal preference/favoritism, and that further portrayed the lack of experience and professionalism that made up the management in my department. 6. Turnover. Ah, the title of this review is finally addressed. The cold hard truth is that I met almost no one that was at Wayfair for over 2 years. They hire young, ambitious, fresh-out-of-college individuals and take what they can get out of them before they eventually leave (the majority of them within 1-2 years). This should be a sign to anyone interested in this company: this kind of turnover does NOT happen in companies that treat their employees well. That is bottom line. If you take nothing else from this review, take this unsettling point about their lack of ability to retain smart, driven employees (there is evidence of this all over this Glassdoor page).
