Vantaggi
This review is geared towards prospective employees and discusses some elemental considerations that impact employment here. - Work with great peers. The front-line employees and their managers are really good people who are very innovative and forward thinking. You'll enjoy working with them and learn a lot in the process. - Can learn some deep skills within an industry in a short time frame and springboard to a better company. Aside from Amazon and Ebay, there are few pure e-tailers the size of Overstock.(Actually, Wayfair will soon surpass Overstock b/c our leadership has been asleep at the switch, chasing losing, pet projects.) It's big enough to actively copy the leading edge of e-commerce, and give you skills (or the ability to speak somewhat intelligently about those skills) to be very employable. And projects here are decided on whims and invented projections and measured against phony numbers (if at all) so that you can really have considerable access to and influence over some very expensive technical resources. - Company has potential to succeed, but that's never been meaningfully exploited and sustained. Overstock's disastrous dives are documented in other reviews, in the news, and recorded earnings calls. (Byrne, to his credit, has owned up to the worst of these, at least verbally). That the company still exists is a testament to financial reality eventually sinking in with the CEO. That it isn't 3x to 5x larger than currently is indicative of a very unsteady hand at the helm and an ineffective board and senior management team. Still, given Overstock's size, tenure, and ability to exist and occasionally thrive on such thin margins, its yet-to-be-realized potential is a definite pro.
Svantaggi
- CEO: This is a publi company, but not really; It's his way or the highway. That's fine, and that makes sense given his financial family inheritance, and his proxy vote for his family and other board members. It's reality. This is NOT an ad hominem smear, but a valid concern for anyone considering employment here. He's a poor judge of character, irrationally reliant on devout trust in and devotion towards him and his abusive, flighty, and paranoid ego. Those whom he has personally mentored into leadership positions would be and actually are hard pressed to find even remotely equivalent employment elsewhere (and have actually lead their personal lives to ruin under his tutelage). So the CEO is one of two people that ultimately matter. (The CEO is quite bright and would make an entertaining lecturer or dinner guest, but these traits don't translate into his presence being a pro of employment at Overstock.) - President: You shouldn't cross the President whose emotions, whims, hobbies, and ire are followed by her pawns -- and quite often by the CEO -- with Pavlovian aplomb. What makes this unique and a con is: 1) the fact that the President has a long and twisted relationship with the CEO where he appears to be directly controlled by the President (e.g., the CEO says he won't tolerate dishonesty, but the President regularly lies to him and plays him like a fiddle), and; 2) that the President is financially illiterate, both in fluency with data and P&L, and personal finances (having had to be bailed out by). As a result, the company will always trip over itself. Like the CEO, the President is paranoid and a narcissist, so be warned that if you cross her or someone in her network, and you'll soon find yourself shown the door as scores of others have, both high and low. - Deep Capture: This is the name of the CEO's quite interesting and compelling blog where this self-styled, typo-ridden CEO-journalist endeavors to reveal the flaws in our financial/governmental systems. The concept of deep capture is that legislators and regulators -- those who are to ensure order and fairness -- are captured pawns of powerful and greedy financial barons. Why should prospective employees care? Because the CEO has unwittingly created the same scenario at Overstock, where he is the captor, and senior and lower executives are bound by velvet handcuffs from behaving rationally, justly, or even honestly. This is less troublesome in a public company than a democracy, but it will impact your potential job here (i.e., no one really has your back), so I thought you should consider it. - This next point is relevant given the Utah location. There's increasing anti-Mormon sentiment among leadership and at the company broadly. Consequently, deep schisms are being opened in the company culture. Statements that would violate protected classes are more frequently uttered in certain circles, and after work hours among management and sr. management. Those who point to some Mormon execs as counter-proof avoid the fact that these few are marginalized "yes men" who are on their way out, or are captured.