Fast paced, often low reward. - Assistant Manager Guitar Center Employee Review

4.0
Mar 7, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you are a musician, it will be tough to find a better place to work. The discounts are immensely helpful when it comes to gathering your gear. However, sometimes it is difficult to find a reward in the (often) large amounts of work you are asked to do. The concept is wonderful: Work in an environment where you are able to sell gear to people who need it. Commission makes sense in this workplace; sell a larger item, see a larger reward. However, this is about where the problems start.

Cons

Although as a GC employee you are working in the largest music retail supplier in the US, you are not readily equipped to sell that merchandise, which leads to the misconception that employees are ignorant. This is often not by choice. Without proper training on new items (which of course is supposed to be covered in the online certifications, but this feels more like homework than actual knowledge building), we are often left without an answer when a customer asks about a new piece of gear. This leads to wasted time using the dreadfully slow computer terminals to locate an answer. We are ill equipped, underappreciated, and under compensated.

Explore other reviews about Guitar Center

5.0
Jul 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Management takes good care of you

Cons

No complaints that I can think of

1.0
Apr 21, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Plenty of capable individual contributors doing real work. - The brand and the business itself are legitimate — the problems are organizational.

Cons

- Senior leadership is politically driven rather than outcome-driven. Strategic initiatives stall out, and leaders spend more energy assigning or shifting blame than actually diagnosing and fixing problems. - Some parts of the org operate on deference to the top. Honest assessments get softened into whatever narrative leadership wants to hear, which makes real cross-functional work difficult. - Senior leaders do not consistently advocate for their own teams. When things get political, self-preservation takes precedence over backing the people underneath, and capable managers end up exposed.

2
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All