Pros
WeddingWire was a unique experience. In some ways, it was one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever had. The people were fantastic. They’re young, talented, friendly, and progressive. But lovely coworkers are rarely enough to stay in a position, especially when management degrades into a confusion, disarray, and unfair treatment. WW can be a great place if you’re blessed to be on a great team with a capable manager. Unfortunately, my team was not one of those and this completely altered my impression of the company. I spent the greater part of my time at WeddingWire watching a confused and lost product team flounder through projects and ideas, with little to no overall direction or goals. — For the most part the Exec team is wonderful and has a deep love for the company and the employees. — The people. WeddingWire has some of the best people I’ve ever worked with and that dynamic is often enough to make you overlook the major problems within the company. — Company events. The culture and events really do have some great elements and so much of this is on the fantastic people you work with.
Cons
— This is *not* a diverse or queer-friendly place to work. At its core, it’s a very white, privileged straight environment that has very few PoC and LGBTQ people. This is a company that espouses their diversity since they own GayWeddings.com, but it’s little more than a headline grab. Many LGBTQ people within the teams have kept their sexuality and or gender identity hidden, due to fear of harassment and discrimination. While many of the problematic people eventually left or were removed, their exits were not associated with their discriminatory conduct, so WeddingWire never had to acknowledge those actions. — Managers are not held responsible for failures. If you’ve been at the company for a long time, you have immunity from actions. This includes everything from poor management skills to dated strategies to straight up discriminatory acts. — People leave due to managers, more often than the company. This is more true here than any company I’ve worked for. Managers are chosen based on time with the company, which leaves unqualified “leaders” that create an environment of fear, gas lighting, and general confusion. — The benefits are nice, but the compensation is well below market value. Expect it to be 20-30% below what you’d make elsewhere. — Product development is exceptionally slow. Due to the large amounts of red tape, tech debt, and top-down only direction; launching a product or feature is a crawl. This also leads to very small outdated features being ‘added’ that are celebrated, even though they took excessive amounts of time and don’t catch the product up to modern standards. Everything is reactive and there’s very little strategy used to determine what is built. All of it seems to come from higher-ups, who can change their mind on a whim and erase months of work. The company pushes a ‘Fail fest’ concept, but it’s rarely used. Projects that should fail go on way too long, and the plug is pulled on others for seemingly no reason but an opinion. — Company has recently instituted massive changes that have resulted in a large exodus of people from the company. It looks like these were done as a way to push attrition and raise profits, without having to announce a layoff.
