Pros
- Healthcare benefits are inexpensive. - Location. - Good name to have on resume.
Cons
- Low base salary . They depend too much on stock options and bonuses to make you salary add up to a decent number. - Meeting heavy workdays with very little time to do your actual work. - Managers don't have the support from directors to be able to solve issues on their own. Directors are almost never around and you have to schedule 1/2 an hour meetings weeks in advance. - Lots of fighting and tension between departments. - Issues constantly get raised to a director-level and managers can't solve anything or do their jobs. Issues take months to get addressed and are rarely solved because of this and the fact that the Directors are so hands off with their department and don't have time to meet with their teams. - As newly launched initiates grow and start to become larger, the company is very slow to hire people for team to be able to support the increased workload. - Reviews are twice a year, and the review process takes months and months to go through. Once you finish your end of year review it's time to start the mid-year review process. - Simple projects are made complex by layers and layers of processes. - Open floorpans with very noisy work environments, and zero privacy. Party-like atmosphere with people drinking and large groups of people stopping in front of your desk to have loud conversations. - No consistent work from home policy. Some departments have flexibility, others don't trust their employees and have a strict no working from home policy.
Pros
Wayfair is a place where I learned more in 5 years than any other place. I was surrounded by the smartest people I know all in one place that were working to solve tough problems. The internal mobility consistently put me on a learning curve setting me up for my current expanded scope. Just look at the number of director alums that have left for big jobs - its a great place.
Cons
Wayfair is not for everyone. The performance culture is real and expectations are high. For me, it worked but I know it can be stressful for others.
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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