Good resume builder, bad career choice don't bother! - Anonymous employee Wayfair Employee Review

1.0
Mar 7, 2010
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Relaxed, casual atmosphere. -A lot of really great people surround you -Ease at booking time off yourself, work/life balance -Free snacks, coffee, tea (but then they use this against you during reviews. "No raise. BUT this is how much per year you get in free snacks") -Great resume builder!

Cons

Where do I begin? - Pay is absolutely insulting. If you are bringing experience from another company, they disregard it all together. Pay is NOT competitive for Boston. Stop lying in all of those job postings. - Instead of rewarding those who have grown their departments and contribute to the company, they leave them behind and pay new people slightly higher, who have no prior work experience. - For most of the promotions that do happen, you are left wondering why, especially when you work with them and know that they do not pull their weight, nor can they answer simple questions or show up. - Upper 'management' has no clue how to manage and they lie straight to your face and become angry when you figure them out. - Upper 'management' is very unprofessional at times, talking smack about direct reports in front of their peers. - They have no clue how to retain and reward talent. - Most of the company is straight out of college, so don't be surprised if you were a director elsewhere and are now being managed by someone with zero experience. - They boast about career development. It doesn't happen. They give you responsibilities of a manager at $30k a year and beat you down when you get tired of the lying. They want you to "prove" yourself without being rewarded, you constantly meet their 'goals' and they give you more and prolong it so they don't have to pay you more. - Customer service has the option to earn more money than the rest of the company. This is new and most reps do not enjoy the now competitive nature. - The turnover is ridiculous, not just in customer service but all around. Upper 'management' is pushing all of the people who built the company out. There is no incentive or employee retention. - Overall morale is really low. 'Management' likes to lie about it and make everything sound great, when in fact most people, especially those who have been here for a long time, are miserable and trying to get out. - CSN is very well known as the land of false promises and lies. You will be promised the world and given some goals to work on. When you reach them they tell you it wasn't good enough (as if they ever had to go through this), give you more, once they are reached again they either fire you due to burn out or never give you the promised promotion or raise.

Explore other reviews about Wayfair

5.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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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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