Vantaggi
Office location, beer in the office, some intelligent coworkers
Svantaggi
Please think very carefully about what you value in a company and a role before you accept an offer from Wayfair. If you value commensurate pay for your work product, you will not find that here. The salaries for all non-engineering roles are far below market average. I believe the pay for entry-level roles in some departments (Category, Merchandising) is just a hair above the adjusted poverty line for Massachusetts. Your salary will also not reflect the amount of work you must output to feel an ounce of job security. Equity in a salary package is nice, but it does not offset the low base pay, especially when most employees will not remain at Wayfair long enough to vest all of their shares. If you value benefits, you will not find them here. There are only six paid holidays. During the Q&A session of a recent all hands meeting, the CEOs scoffed at the idea of increasing the number of paid holidays, citing that ecommerce is “always on.” PTO package is a joke. If you value clarity of your role and defined ownership of projects, you will not find that here. Multiple departments attack the same problem with no cross-collaboration, resulting in duplicated work and wasted time. Leadership is disorganized and changes priorities monthly, if not weekly. There is a serious pass the buck culture when it comes to transactional ticket work. Teams that work in the same organizational area will refuse to action tickets that fall outside of their responsibilities, despite the fact that the scope of their job has never been clearly defined by management. If you value the ability to advance internally, you will not find that here. The company will keep you in your entry role level (L1, L2, L3, etc.) for as long as possible. They will change the criteria for promotions as you approach your target eligibility date. There is a lack of transparency of what you need to do to succeed. This, coupled with the fact that you are stack ranked against every employee at your level within your department leads to a highly political and toxic environment when you want a promotion. You will not be promoted on merit, rather what your manager thinks you are doing. And yet, management is clueless as to why there is such an extreme amount of turnover. You will be told that your direct manager and upper management as a whole cares about your career development. They do not. Any minor mistake or perceived lack of job performance will be used against you during biannual evaluations to preclude you from advancing. When I was hired in early November, I was subjected to a full performance evaluation after less than two months of work. I received a “not meeting expectations” due to a lack of technical understanding of our systems and asking too many questions of my coworkers. I was told that receiving two “not meeting” ratings would put you on the fast track to being fired. I found it ridiculous that I was graded so harshly after such little time spent in seat and found it particularly rich that I was dinged for asking questions in a department that offered NO formal training for the role. Wayfair prides itself on having employees who are curious and collaborative, but I found my experience to be the exact opposite of that. In sum, if you value working hard for low pay, minimal advancement opportunities, no time off, a toxic and very political work environment, Wayfair surely has a role for you!
