A Place to Crash & Burn in 6 Months’ Time - werkgeversreview Associate Site Merchandiser bij Wayfair

1,0
15 jun 2017
Aanbevelen
Goedkeuring directeur
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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!

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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).

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5,0
6 apr 2026
Aanbevelen
Goedkeuring directeur
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Smart colleagues tackling interesting, business relevant problems.

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Long-term projects sometimes significantly modified in response to short-term business needs.

5,0
12 mei 2017
Aanbevelen
Goedkeuring directeur
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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).

Minpunten

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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Reactie van Wayfair
8y
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.
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