AVOID AT ALL COSTS - Merchandising Specialist Wayfair Employee Review

1.0
Mar 20, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Beer in the office - that's it.

Cons

Pretty much everything else. Management is awful. Awful, awful, awful. Here are some examples: 1) My manager was supposed to approve a coworkers promotion, she received confirmation in her review that she had received said promotion but never received her raise. Turns out the manager never approved it and lied to the employee every week saying it was getting corrected, going as far as forging a compensation sheet to cover up her mistake. 2) After the aforementioned manager was fired it was up to the director to schedule our reviews, which going into the last week before the deadline, we still had not had. We asked everyday for our reviews, we wanted to at least know what our compensation would be before any salary changes took effect. Instead of ever getting our reviews, 6/9 of the women on my team were pulled into a meeting with managers from other departments where we were tersely informed that our team would be split up, our remaining 3 friends and coworkers had been laid off (after a combined 12 years of tenure), these were our new managers effective immediately, and we would be meeting with them right aftewards (so we could not see our friends on their way out). The girls laid off were so graciously informed they could have their things mailed to them. It stung having this happen to an all-female team of capable women at the hands of one man who clearly derelict in his duties, did not want to clean up the mess he allowed to pile up. 3) Another coworker met with her manager directly after reviews were submitted so she could work on any opportunity areas before her review meeting in 2 months, but all of her feedback was positive. Two weeks later her manager lets her know that he "heard back on reviews and she may not be to happy about it." He let her know that upper level management wanted a bell curve so they adjusted everyone's number scores and gave the reviews back to middle management to rewrite to reflect the new scores. They bumped her down to inconsistent performance and therefore made her ineligible for a well deserved merit raise. 4) One time management pulled the entire sales team into a meeting for a "Pizza Party" from there in front of everyone, they laid off 40 people. 5) You're not supposed to be eligible for a review unless you have been at the company at least two months (used to be 6 but it's as if the want to fire the people they hire). A co-worker of mine had been working there for two weeks before he received his review, which was not favorable (I guess you're supposed to be an expert on the systems of a 10,000 person company after 10 business days??) Anyways, they put him on a performance improvement plan after his formal review and let him go two weeks later. If you join Wayfair, expect to walk by people crying in conference rooms, expect to never a relationship with your manager (it's hard when you're bounced around all of the time, I had 8 in three years and narrowly escaped a 9th), expect for upper level management to never know your name or what you do, expect the people you work with to constantly change (and not because they "move fast, break things," but because the average tenure is probably 8 months"), and above all expect that illusion of a fun environment to be shattered. This place is not a start up which they want you to believe, they are very corporate but don't want to tell people that. And I guess they shouldn't because the place is way to disorganized to resemble any successful corporations. If you end up here in desperation, at least try to keep your eyes peeled on the excessively unethical practices on the company and not sip the kool-aid too much

Explore other reviews about Wayfair

5.0
Apr 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Smart colleagues tackling interesting, business relevant problems.

Cons

Long-term projects sometimes significantly modified in response to short-term business needs.

5.0
May 12, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Wayfair is a fantastic company if you're a software engineer who's looking to keep quiet, and not speak up when management treats you like garbage. And it excels at finding leaders who are willing to go the extra mile to be untrustworthy and make you feel like your job isn't safe (and for real, it's not).

Cons

Let's talk. The company has been growing like crazy, and one thing that was never thought about was "can we actually hire at a sustainable rate, and scale accordingly?" The answer was no on both counts. Software engineers at Wayfair have a history of disappearing. People who enter labs have an especially low success rate (70% make it through, and less than 50% last a whole year). It's basically their way to run people through a burnout gauntlet, and see who survives. And then you have the stories of the people who come in to work and are just asked to resign. You'll see hints of it here on Glassdoor if you dig, and it's even worse than what you read. They actually gathered all the engineers for a big meeting at the beginning of this year. And they said that they were sorry that people felt scared and were sad that people felt like management didn't care. Which is exactly how we felt. They promised that their door was open, and they were going to work hard to set things right. One person out of 500 stood up and asked a really cutting question. AND THEN THEY FIRED HIM! And there were 3 completely different official reasons given about it. It's crazy. The leaders also started up an engineering meeting to keep everyone on the same page and answer anonymous questions. One time someone asked why we couldn't get snow days off, because it was tough to shovel for 3 to 4 hours and still work an 8 hour day. So the leaders proceeded to talk down to us and reprimand us for even thinking about asking a question like this. Turnover has been high over the past year, and the best people are leaving. This worries management, but they still have no idea that the problem is actually them creating a terrible environment. So if you're a good person who cares about the person next to you and leaving things better than you found them, don't bother applying here. But if you're not, and you just want to keep your head down and not question anything, then this is the perfect place for you. And if that's what you want, Wayfair gets 5 stars. Amazing career opportunities if you want to have the same job forever. Incredible senior management that value untrustworthiness. A fantastic culture of watching people next to you disappear. It's truly a perfect company.

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Wayfair Response
8y
First, I wanted to thank you for providing feedback. Second, I am very sorry to hear that your experience was far from ideal. I know it can be hard to give feedback if you feel management is the problem, but leadership would love to learn about these issues to refine the Wayfair employee experience. We do try to create an open and transparent environment; one thing we’ve started doing is department-wide anonymous surveys. This has been helpful in identifying issues where people don’t feel comfortable speaking up for whatever reason and pinpoint where any issues may exist. As you noted, the company is growing very quickly - our Engineering team alone has grown tenfold over the past five years. I won’t pretend we get it right all the time, but we do aim to scale our teams and our systems reasonably to meet the rapid growth of our business, and we rely on employee feedback to refine these processes. To that end, we’ve put a lot of time and energy into our interview process. And, we closely track our voluntary and involuntary attrition rates to make sure we are keeping high employee retention and so that we can immediately nip any potential issues in the bud. For Wayfair Labs, we’ve made huge strides since the beginning of this program, and our average success rate is now over 90%, with several classes at 100%. We also run management trainings on giving, receiving and soliciting feedback. In these trainings - and in general - we encourage respect for all teammates and partners, communication and collaboration, and we try create opportunities for people to take on new challenges. I am very excited about the work we’re doing to solve tough challenges and there’s an exciting opportunity for our employees to do big things – our goal is to build a team that feels encouraged and empowered to do so. I’m very sorry you didn’t have the experience we try to cultivate. Once again, thank you for this feedback.
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