"Oh its the bees knees" - Engineer Wayfair Employee Review

1.0
Jan 5, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

They provided free snacks...I guess thats good if you eat that stuff..

Cons

So after being let go several months ago. I felt it was time to write jail sentence at wayfair. Funny thing all of a sudden tons of positive reviews after all negative, So this explains why all of a sudden in the last 4 months there is a rise in reviews. So, If you’re a college student get ready because wayfair is coming to your campus to recruit you, why? because you have an ivy league degree, you need the money so they will low ball you, Just to get you in the door. Tell you about the free wall of snacks on every floor and the beer on tap, the game room and pod outings. Like most companies they will inflate their egos to get you in the door. Then you will be given a cool project to work on but very little direction or documentation and expect you to get it done better. If you ask your manager for training or documentation, they will yes you to death but never follow through. I was promised from my first week I would have training in software that pertained to my job on the 1st month, the 4th month, the 6th month. Then on the 8th month I was told its not coming and to get over it by my manager. But wait don’t I need the tools necessary to perform my job? Of course you do, but they will not give it to you. If you ask a mid-level (4) manager or director for thoughts they see it as an attempt to steal their jobs, and then they find ways to make you look bad, like you’re not knowing your job or make up a lie to say you didn’t complete a task. Some employees actually act and verbally show themselves as they run the show and don’t care how they speak to you or what they say. I had this happen to me in a warehouse in front of a senior director but that director didn’t care when I said to him” what’s the deal with her attitude and condescending remarks”. He laughed it off and said “oh well”. The level 3 managers are pretentious engineers, they all have rude behavior and are out for themselves by throwing you under a bus, these managers favoritism is rampant, if you kiss their butts, and be a yes man and bend over backwards for them and rat on other people you will make it at wayfair. They hire young inexperienced kids, yes kids, not seasoned highly experienced adults, who have been in the industry for years, that’s because they couldn’t afford to pay them. It is by far the most judgmental place, it’s about playing favorites and playing the games. Everything changes constantly from pushing out system production updates every 4-6 hours during live work time, and then to have the live production updates fail, and then everything shuts down including the warehouse ops. I was placed on a PIP that I wasn’t performing as expected and was told I had to turn myself around and present a plan to fix it. If I was never trained on process and procedures, and never received the training I was promised during my interviews by level 3,4 and 5 mangers, how can I improve myself or the ways to fix it if I don’t know what it first entailed. During my weekly pip meetings, I was never told if I am on track or doing what I need to do or is how am I presenting it correct? All I was told, is there is a new sheriff in town and my manager wasn’t going to be the one let go. My manager was offsite and had favorites in his office location and I had a few words with some of those others staff members who were rude and belligerent to me, and then lied to my manger I was the problem. I then submitted the issues to the so called anonymous board that reviews problems for their departments, and when they read my issues in our monthly meeting live not knowing who presented it they had no idea it was happening? Really? That means you have no idea what is going on overall in your department as a level 6 senior director/vp level. Nothing was done about it, there was only a quick comment live that “oh wow, we didn’t know this, we will get it resolved”. I still talk to people who work there and it’s still happening.. so as some of the posts mentioned.. If you want to be kicked around, talked down too, disrespected and thrown under a bus, this is the place for you. At least I heard one of the level 5 went back to Portland so that’s a good thing, he was useless anyway. If you get on someone’s bad side by voicing your opinions watch your back, that person and their clan are coming to get you out. Ok so now the person who monitors peoples comments will post up “First, I wanted to thank you for providing feedback. Second, I am very sorry to hear that your experience was far from ideal” ready….set…go…

Explore other reviews about Wayfair

5.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart colleagues tackling interesting, business relevant problems.

Cons

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

5.0
May 12, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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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Wayfair Response
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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