Pros
The Pros... - Great location in Back Bay - Some really great managers - Interesting work - Lots of responsibility - Lots of opportunity to change departments and roles - Monthly pod outings where $20-30 is allotted to employees for food/drinks - Great quarterly meetings/parties, a great summer party, and an amazing holiday party - Lots of Paid Time Off - A fair amount of flexibility with sick days and call-outs - Potential for great Work/Life balance - You can win free sporting games and theater/opera tickets - Very young workforce with a lot of great people - Laid back dress code; shorts ARE now allowed, as of last year - Free snacks/coffee/tea/water and cheap soda/juice ...and The Counters - The location is great, but unless the MBTA closes the office doesn't closed (even if it's blizzarding) so if you live on the T you'll likely have to hike it in to the office (especially in Customer Service - there's a lot more flexibility outside of the department [as someone who's seen it on both sides] but it can get rough quickly.) - For every great manager at Wayfair, there are 6-7 horrible ones. A lot of Wayfair's managers joined the company years ago as their first job out of college, and they've never had prior work experience, or any other frame of reference. It's impossible to operate as Wayfair did in 2007, but a lot of the managers don't realize that. This is a huge problem across every department. - Interesting work in some departments, very tedious or outright painful work across others - Lots of responsibility can be a great thing, but a lot of managers heap an unending pile of work on their teams, and it's quite common for a Second (or Third) in Command to actually be running the team/handling the Senior Level workload - There are a LOT of opportunities to move around in the company, but the vast majority of these moves are lateral. It's VERY rare for someone outside of Senior Management to be able to get a significant promotion (and let's not even get into the pay just yet.) A significant amount of the workforce may move from one Entry Level position to another, without any real boost. "Specialist" roles are sometimes bestowed upon people, but this doesn't translate into real Specialist roles outside the company. - Lots of Paid Time Off, but especially around the holidays this means that unless you're a super high achiever or close friends with Management that you'll be in the office on Christmas Eve - while everyone Senior has been gone for days. - The laid back dress code can be great, but it means a sea of sweatshirts, leggings, baseball hats, and ratty t-shirts. - The "free" snacks are great, until you see how much is actually deducted from your yearly salary to pay for them - Work/Life balance is a great thing in some departments, and a flat-out lie in others. There are some people (especially managers) who easily work a 35-40 hour work week, while many of the lower level staff (especially Second and Third in Commands) who regularly clock 80 hour weeks, without an end in sight. And this isn't something that affects just a department like Engineering
Cons
- The pay is flat-out abominable. Every department across the board is paid FAR under industry standards. A staggering amount of roles start under $30K, and many departments refuse to even give Standard of Living raises - It's also excruciatingly difficult to get a raise; some of the few who do have to literally fight tooth and nail for it, and even then there's no change of a remote guarantee. They'll sometimes give title promotions, but money is beyond difficult to attain. However, you'll see some favorites rapidly move up the food chain, while the rest of your coworkers are languishing. - As mentioned in the Pros section, Management can be staggeringly under-qualified for their roles. Simply being in the company for 5-6 years has absolutely no guarantee of expertise, but that's not the way Wayfair often sees it. Especially for Mid-Level employees coming into the company, seeing how Management works can be horrifying. - There is NO support for New and Mid-Level Managers. Over the past 4 or so years, HR has attempted to start some trainings, but they've NEVER finished the courses or any of the training. It's all crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.
