REI reviews

Steady decline to value cost cutting over the employee and customer experience, payroll management is erratic and punitive for managers and employees alike, the daily battle of PT employees over hours is a morale killer, management development has turned into a popularity contest replacing talented managers with people who simply agree with upper management. The employee experience varies a lot throughout the company and the increasing number of dissatisfied managers and frustrated employees worried about their jobs and hours makes for a bad mix for customer service. Departments at headquarters are more disconnected than ever and appear more interested in pushing out changes than listening to how they're going. They still talk a big game over various initiatives like diversity but every year it goes on, it seems more like lip service. There's very little diversity in store management or senior leadership beyond gender. Good luck to those coming from other retailers, unless you're prepared to smile and nod a lot. Unfortunately, at this point there are more retailers out there doing a better job at taking care of their teams and their customers.

I believe that some significant pockets of mid-management are more interested in managing their own careers, titles and pay scale at the expense of advancing the business, or even keeping the senior employees that got them there. (Allegedly, reportedly, "on the down low", etc. a significant number rumored to be at least 150 (out of approx 1200 total at HQ) mostly, senior-level 10+ year-tenured staff and management employees -- with all the ones that I know, having a history of major contributions and perfect performance records were laid off at the company's headquarters in March 2013 plus an "unknown number" more at the stores.). This appears in my humble opinion, (since they are not really saying, and being publicly as vague as possible) to be an arbitrary, simple cost-cutting measure, i.e. remove the "more expensive employees". In addition, in my former department, I had noticed in recent years, that promotions and advancements were very few and very far between at the staff level. In my opinion, It looks like they possibly want to maintain a mostly entry to mid-level position to keep costs down. Per all of the above, I think it might be a good place to get your "feet wet" coming out of college or early in your career, but you might not want to plan to stay working at REI for the "long haul" as like me, you may never make it to see the highly-touted "sabbatical" benefit (at 15 years). Unfortunately, I think some career-limiting, and very negative precedents have been set with this particular lay-off, and a strong message has been sent to all remaining and future employees via these actions. My advice: If you stop advancing for any length of time, or are working in an area that is not the primary or a significant focus for that given year (or even a 6 month period), move on in the best interests of your career -- or they may do it for you ! I believe now that staff employees have become "a commodity", or "a number"....very un-REI like if you ask me (e.g. as compared to a decade or more ago)!