REI reviews

REI has become a stressful, when is the next shoe going to fall environment. Many restructuring and re-orgs have become the norm. and seems to be long term employees who are targeted. Let me be clear, these were highly productive, well liked and respected employees but not valued by the new management. The culture and values are shadow of what they once were, pay more for benefits while they are reduced. Sabbaticals have been reduced and most likely going to be a thing of the past in the next couple of years.

If you are working part time as a student or have another job, REI is great. But I would never recommend going career with the company on the store level. I saw several cases where upper management strung employees along for DECADES without offering any form of job security or realistic expectation of promotion or raise. From what I saw, some of it comes directly from management, but the rest comes from shear fact that turnover in low-mid level management is extremely low while turnover with sales staff is extremely high. The company looks very appealing from the bottom, but getting out of the base-line pay grade is extremely difficult.