WeddingWire

2.0

20 Nov 2017

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

For good or for bad, people come to work for WeddingWire and it becomes not just a job; many people will stay afterwards, and have a beer or two with each other after the work day. This is due to a fairly youthful workforce that are not bothered with other major life commitments (family, children, ect...). Thus, I agree with many of the other sentiments about WeddingWire, if you become friends with the people you work with, it can be an extension of college for you. There's free breakfast everyday (at least when I worked there), and free catered lunches at the end of every month. In addition, the market, while you do have to pay for the food, it's heavily subsidized. Finally, the company takes coffee very seriously, meaning there's espresso, coffee, and every variation of coffee you can imagine. Following in the footsteps of other tech companies, the environment itself is very nice; the ambiance of the office is very well themed, and it never felt like an office building. Company sponsored events are fun, and involve a lot of drinking if that falls into your definition of a good time

Cons

The best way I can describe WeddingWire is like this, just look at the ratings trend. What’s happening in the past couple of years is the growth that the company is experiencing; it’s growing and growing faster than it can really handle. This means that WeddingWire is consistently hiring people who don’t fit the original company culture into the company’s middle management. The ideas that the company comes up aren’t original, and the direction of the product team tends to be all over the place. One of my main issues with the company is the passive aggressive nature of the people who work there. If your idea or work doesn’t fit, no one really tells you what’s going on. Instead, you keep going down a path of failure without course correction. When things are left on the chopping block, everyone gets together and starts assigning blame to others when finally people either quit or are fired. While I was there, there were two projects that teams spent over 6 months working on, only to have them abandoned. If you aren’t friends with the people you work with, coming to work can engender a feeling of a social outcast . Meaning, if you’re not hanging out with your co-workers on the weekends or after work, you’re most likely not going to get far. If your someone that leans left, likes to drink, and enjoys the DC night life, you’ll do fine. On the other hand, if you’re the type that likes to have a life outside of work, I would strongly suggesting to look elsewhere. Couple of things about the benefits: - The insurance plan is mediocre at best, they don’t cover enough of the premiums. - Pay is on the lower-end of DC Metro area averages. The DC metro area is crazy expensive, and most other companies pay the DC premium to their employees. WeddingWire will not. If you expect to live here, please be prepared for a roommate. - Unlimited PTO is a good idea, but I’ve never seen people take more than 2 weeks off. When I took a vacation, I was told that other people took offense about it

WeddingWire Response

I joined as VP of Engineering about eight months ago, so our paths may not have crossed. I'm happy to hear that WeddingWire was more than just a job for you and it sounds like you enjoyed our culture, perks, and most importantly - the people. There are a lot of exciting things happening with our Product strategy, but the people are what brought me to WeddingWire. Their openness and desire to become an even better team is very motivating and makes coming to work very rewarding. A compelling Product strategy and strong business are great things to have, but having great people committed to being a great team is what will ultimately allow us to continue to be successful. We have a hiring plan specific to the Product Development team to ensure we hire the right people for the right roles. Finding the right people takes time, and isn't something we're willing to compromise on. We've spent a lot of time since I joined investing in our management team and we have an individual contributor career track as an option for those who aren't interested in management. The People Team (HR) have been great partners and have done some great work this year with our #WeDoFeedback program (to name just one). The program has helped tremendously with our push for a continuous feedback culture. Our goal is to encourage two-way communication between employees and managers, something I'm personally very passionate about and is something we'll continue to invest in. You mentioned drinking a few times, and that's certainly not how we define who we are. We ensure that all events include non-alcohol options so that everyone feels welcome. We've also implemented a Voice of the Employee survey and conducted focus groups to get an understanding of what employees like and dislike about our benefit plans as we're always working to improve them. I appreciate your feedback - it sounds like we're focusing our efforts to improve in the right places and we'll continue to listen to as much input as we can get!

Good for people that are trying to get used to the area, not so much otherwise - Software Engineer WeddingWire Employee Review

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