Great place for entry-level professionals to learn & grow — not for experienced professionals
Pros
-Younger crowd, which means everyone is excited and passionate about the work they do -Most coworkers are friendly and always happy to help you -Financially strong company so resources are in abundance, e.g., technology and equipment -Teams are allotted funds for outings which makes for a fun time and bonding between coworkers -Free snacks, beer, and wine -Excellent general on-boarding for company history, culture, and benefits
Cons
-The recruitment process is misleading; they inform you that you can receive a bonus each year, but that is based on your performance rating (more on the performance process below). Employees are eligible for Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), which seems like a great benefit, but they fail to inform you that the RSUs vest over five years. Further, employees are assigned a level, Level 1 = Entry Level, 2 = Specialist or Assistant Manager, 3 = Manager, 4 = Senior Manager, 5 = Associate Director, 6 = Director, 7 = Sr. Director/VP+, but recruiters don't inform you which level you are being hired for, so if you are an experienced professional, this can stunt your growth. -Wayfair's review process is borderline unethical. Twice a year, employees write a self-review, collect peer reviews, and managers evaluate the performance of their employees. Then, after manager reviews are submitted, based on your employee level, those above your level get in a room and conduct "calibration," which means a group of people review all employee evaluations & ratings and then go down a list of names to see if a manager's review aligns with the opinion of others. The issue with this is that those in the room are not always familiar with an employee's performance, which can lead to misconstrued opinions and negatively impact an employee's review. Further, employees are put on a curve based on top-performers, which is also a bad thing because employees are assessed based on their levels and not necessarily their roles, so if two employees do two different jobs, but one is viewed as a top-performer, that can negatively effect someone else's review. -Given Wayfair's financial health, the insurance plans are dismal; expensive with high deductibles -Work among team members is not fairly distributed -Extremely political and cliquey environment. If someone has one bad interaction with you at Wayfair, that will follow you through the rest of your time there -On-boarding for departments is left up to the discretion of each team/manager, which creates inconsistent information amongst teams -While employee turnover varies from department to department, turnover within my department during my time at Wayfair was very high -Wayfair claims to be a transparent environment, but information is often held closely and not shared with teams, for example, organizational or departmental changes -A majority of managers are very young and lack experience outside of Wayfair -Unless you have an MBA and/or are ex-Deloitte, ex-BCG, ex-McKinsey, Wayfair will be a very difficult place for you to grow and advance -Wayfair likes to let employees know they can offer upward feedback to managers, and you are actually evaluated on your ability to do this. However, when it comes time to provide upward feedback, I personally experienced managers who became defensive and found ways to diminish or misconstrue my feedback to them -Work life balance is horrendous; if you're looking to experience burn-out, Wayfair will absolutely do that to you. -Organizationally, employees are expected to use sick time and take a PTO day, but the enforcement of this policy is left to the discretion of managers -Pay is not competitive with the rest of the market and as mentioned above, they try to allure you with a bonus and RSUs, but base pay is terrible!
