Wayfair reviews

3.1

39% would recommend to a friend

(6,849 total reviews)
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Niraj Shah

28% approve of CEO

27% positive business outlook

Wayfair has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 6,849 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Wayfair employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

7K reviews
1.0
Jun 15, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pros: 1. Professional experience. Working at Wayfair certainly does arm you with a vast amount of professional experience that you may not have gained elsewhere (though it is tough to truly say). They assign a level of responsibility to new hires that, while it is flattering, is in most cases undeniably irresponsible. However, this forces the employees to jump into their roles and take on challenges, and therefore leads to an enormous amount of professional experience gained in a rather short amount of time. 2. Fun workplace environment. Of course, I have to address the super cool office. Kegs, board games, video games, arcade games, no offices or cubicles - it’s an abundance of fun, a carefully selected collection of amenities in order to charm the pants off of millennials...and it works!

Cons

Cons: 1. Transparency. For a company that prides themselves in being so transparent, I came to find that they often were not. Management was hush-hush about big decisions, sneaky about their wrongdoings, and dishonest about the state of the department. 2. Communication. Wayfair makes a substantial effort to impress upon their employees how important communication is. However, it became quickly apparent that there is a major lack of communication in this company. Our management could not communicate simple things to other departments that were absolutely key, such as letting our business partners know that we were totally swamped, etc... The whole company needs a major training session on how to effectively communicate in both verbal and written forms. 3. Training/mentorship. My manager started a few weeks before I was brought on and it could not have been more apparent. I came to quickly realize that the training and mentorship within Wayfair is so poor because so few people have been there over 1 year, therefore the company is filled with managers who...don’t know how to manage. It seems comical almost, but it’s the honest truth. My personal experience in this area was consistently being told I was doing things wrong, and never being taught how to do them right. It was nitpicky, it was petty, it was constant scrutiny, it was a true sign of a flat out inability to lead. And even the most senior managers in my department were clueless when it came to leadership, or else they would have stepped in and made some real change. That is not a reflection of proper training, that is not a reflection of proper mentorship, that is the result of hiring managers that are under qualified and that lack simple skills needed to truly guide and encourage personal growth. 4. Work-Life Balance. There simply is none. Even though they throw company parties and don’t provide laptops to take home and work on, in my experience all anyone could ever possibly think about was this job. It completely took over my personal life due to the immense stress I was under, and I can say the same for others in my department. The workload was so crushing that I think back on it and it seems unreal. 5. Salary/Promotions. You can read about it the hundreds of reviews here...the pay is embarrassing, frankly. With the amount of work they assign and the amount of responsibility they dole out to barely-out-of-college employees, they should feel ashamed of themselves for paying so little. Promotions are unfair and often offensive, because in my department, they were so clearly based off of personal preference/favoritism, and that further portrayed the lack of experience and professionalism that made up the management in my department. 6. Turnover. Ah, the title of this review is finally addressed. The cold hard truth is that I met almost no one that was at Wayfair for over 2 years. They hire young, ambitious, fresh-out-of-college individuals and take what they can get out of them before they eventually leave (the majority of them within 1-2 years). This should be a sign to anyone interested in this company: this kind of turnover does NOT happen in companies that treat their employees well. That is bottom line. If you take nothing else from this review, take this unsettling point about their lack of ability to retain smart, driven employees (there is evidence of this all over this Glassdoor page).

2.0
Jan 17, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

If you're a passive person that wants to be a manager, this is your dream job. There's no guidance, no accountability, there are very few good leaders, and hr is afraid everybody will sue them, so you'll never have to discipline anybody.

Cons

If you wish you could travel back to high school to re-live the teenage drama, you'll really enjoy it here. Even the directors aren't above having "relations" with entry level employees. HR will let personal feelings impact how you're treated, then they'll turn on you in an instant and fire you for any absurd reason they can find.

1.0
May 1, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office location, beer in the office, some intelligent coworkers

Cons

Please think very carefully about what you value in a company and a role before you accept an offer from Wayfair. If you value commensurate pay for your work product, you will not find that here. The salaries for all non-engineering roles are far below market average. I believe the pay for entry-level roles in some departments (Category, Merchandising) is just a hair above the adjusted poverty line for Massachusetts. Your salary will also not reflect the amount of work you must output to feel an ounce of job security. Equity in a salary package is nice, but it does not offset the low base pay, especially when most employees will not remain at Wayfair long enough to vest all of their shares. If you value benefits, you will not find them here. There are only six paid holidays. During the Q&A session of a recent all hands meeting, the CEOs scoffed at the idea of increasing the number of paid holidays, citing that ecommerce is “always on.” PTO package is a joke. If you value clarity of your role and defined ownership of projects, you will not find that here. Multiple departments attack the same problem with no cross-collaboration, resulting in duplicated work and wasted time. Leadership is disorganized and changes priorities monthly, if not weekly. There is a serious pass the buck culture when it comes to transactional ticket work. Teams that work in the same organizational area will refuse to action tickets that fall outside of their responsibilities, despite the fact that the scope of their job has never been clearly defined by management. If you value the ability to advance internally, you will not find that here. The company will keep you in your entry role level (L1, L2, L3, etc.) for as long as possible. They will change the criteria for promotions as you approach your target eligibility date. There is a lack of transparency of what you need to do to succeed. This, coupled with the fact that you are stack ranked against every employee at your level within your department leads to a highly political and toxic environment when you want a promotion. You will not be promoted on merit, rather what your manager thinks you are doing. And yet, management is clueless as to why there is such an extreme amount of turnover. You will be told that your direct manager and upper management as a whole cares about your career development. They do not. Any minor mistake or perceived lack of job performance will be used against you during biannual evaluations to preclude you from advancing. When I was hired in early November, I was subjected to a full performance evaluation after less than two months of work. I received a “not meeting expectations” due to a lack of technical understanding of our systems and asking too many questions of my coworkers. I was told that receiving two “not meeting” ratings would put you on the fast track to being fired. I found it ridiculous that I was graded so harshly after such little time spent in seat and found it particularly rich that I was dinged for asking questions in a department that offered NO formal training for the role. Wayfair prides itself on having employees who are curious and collaborative, but I found my experience to be the exact opposite of that. In sum, if you value working hard for low pay, minimal advancement opportunities, no time off, a toxic and very political work environment, Wayfair surely has a role for you!

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