What a joke! - Anonymous employee Guitar Center Employee Review

2.0
24 Nov 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Laid back culture. Being a part of the music industry. Discount on gear. Good parking, close to lots of stores and restaurants and the freeway.

Cons

There is NO accountability or performance requirements. Management is not responsive to employee needs. If there is a problem the stakeholders are never available or on vacation. Lots of time wasted putting out fires. No enforcement of policies. NO training what so ever. A lot of wasted time pointing fingers and passing the buck. Reactive attitude vs proactive. So many lazy careless unqualified employees who get promoted and disappear for hours or call in sick twice a week while the hard workers are tasked with more. VERY low pay for the demands of the job or whatever job you have. There are no rewards for hard work. My boss told me not to work as hard, 110% to 80%. ?! "Promotions" are made up titles on a whim to those in the boys club. HR is a joke and blows you off if you have an issue. Lots of unprofessional conversations, jokes and comments. No room for advancement, no pay raises. Lots of people talking behind peoples backs. The health/dental benefits are terrible. No 401k. Very immature workforce like your'e in 8th grade. A lot of stressed out employees or people who used to be good employees but just quit giving a damn because nobody else does. Everything is done with minimum effort. Nobody reads their email or stays ahead of their work to make deadlines. Understaffed. Company events and they can't even operate their own sound or video system, for a music company..umm ok. Procedures/protocols are all very gray, only apply when it's convenient. Lots of time spent trying to cover your back so others don't throw you under the bus. Run down office environment and outdated computers, messy bathrooms and dark building, the lights are kept turned off all day like vampires. Felt like a start-up like the company opened its doors yesterday and I kept getting told this was the improved version, for a company that is 30 years old. VERY high turn over, very low morale. A mecca for drunks and stoners. The CEO has just changed AGAIN, that's twice in under 3 years, new executives and VP's every other week. The company is over 1 billion dollars in debt and keep opening stores. Manufacturer's are not getting paid. If you're going to have a company event, turn on the air conditioning and have enough chairs for everyone. There is a more I could put here but I think you get the point. Do not work here if you are looking fr a permanent career or have an education or any dignity or pride in your work if you can help it. If you do do, buy some gear, start looking for your next job and think of it as just a short stepping stone. They will probably will be bankrupt or the very least have massive layoffs and just keep repeating the cycle they're with the way it's operating until they go bust.

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5.0
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CEO approval
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Pros

Management takes good care of you

Cons

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1.0
21 Apr 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Plenty of capable individual contributors doing real work. - The brand and the business itself are legitimate — the problems are organizational.

Cons

- Senior leadership is politically driven rather than outcome-driven. Strategic initiatives stall out, and leaders spend more energy assigning or shifting blame than actually diagnosing and fixing problems. - Some parts of the org operate on deference to the top. Honest assessments get softened into whatever narrative leadership wants to hear, which makes real cross-functional work difficult. - Senior leaders do not consistently advocate for their own teams. When things get political, self-preservation takes precedence over backing the people underneath, and capable managers end up exposed.

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