Very toxic working environment - Software Engineer Wayfair Employee Review

1.0
Sep 24, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good stocks plan. This is actually the only argument they use to try to convince people to stay in the company. Good work-life balance

Cons

It has an old code with a collection of bad practices. Test coverage for example is less than 1%. The code quality will change significantly depending on the department you work at, and so will the culture. A team responsibility will change all the time and projects get canceled in mid of development without explanation. Engineers spend weeks or months on investigations that go nowhere. Communication between teams is poor and almost inexistent between engineering departments. I know a project that was canceled after 6 months of development because managers/director didn't knew they had 2 teams in the same department working on different solutions for the same problem. The review system became a tool for bad managers to threaten engineers and ensure they don't get negative reviews. Many of the managers are engineers who chose an easy way to get promoted. They lack the proper skillset, many can't communicate properly, don't know how to deal with people (special with the opposite sex). This has a direct impact on the performance of everybody bellow them. The company does nothing to solve the constant sexism in the workplace. There are people with multiple reports of sexual harassment but nothing is done about it. Directors tell you that you should try to solve the problems or at least communicate them, but anyone who raises problems gets punished. They try to sell the idea of a "cool startup workplace", but it's a hard corporative environment, where politics is more important than production. A place where lies and sabotage are common.

avatar
Wayfair Response
5y
Hello, we are happy to hear that you appreciated the good work-life balance we have been working to establish. We are also sorry that your experience working with Wayfair was disappointing. We are interested to hear more about how you feel that we could improve and would be happy to talk about your experience. Please contact TalentManagementEU@wayfair.com to discuss this further and thanks again for sharing your feedback!

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.

915
avatar
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.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All