GSI Commerce Reviews

Former Employee – worked at GSI Commerce

Pros – Management has traditionally been supportive of employees' advancement and career development, allowing for people to try different disciplines. There is a system in place to ensure that promotions and financial incentives are merit based (not based on internal politics.) I think that the financial compensation is competitive with industry standards. Though benefits seem to have been cut back over the years, I think they are still competitive with the industry.

Cons – The company cuts back staff, equipment and contract services at the expense of the workers. Meaning the remaining employees are expected to "do more with less." This mentality seemed reasonable at first, but it has perpetuated into a vicious cycle where they expect more and more (and more!) out of their people. Most people are overworked, and work-life balance seems to be a distant memory.
Finance seems to be making many decisions which they are not qualified to make. All they care about is revenue versus expense. They have been given power to dictate expenses, though they do not understand the impact of cutting certain expenses. Penny pinching today may cost you revenue for the next few years if we don't have enough resources to put out a product.

Advice to Senior Management – Cutting staff and services have led employees to be stretched so thin, mistakes are made and morale is low. When I first joined GSI the leaders had integrity, and people there wanted to stay for life, but the current regime changed all that. Today it’s a revolving door and the people who are still there are the ones who haven’t been able to find a new job yet. You need to get back to the core values and to be innovative - you have done nothing "amazing" in a long time. Wake Up!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GSI Commerce

Pros – If you are good team and department and good rappo with your manager, you can survive

Cons – tooo many politics. at each level. no info flow..

Advice to Senior Management – company direction.. Processes need a lots of improvement.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GSI Commerce

Pros – - job security as the industry continues to grow
- work is different and challenging
- employees have become like a family to me (still in touch with employees who have left because we became that close)

Cons – - management doesn't know what they're doing and they don't care to learn the day to day
- no communication between departments and different levels in the organization
- for a technology based company, the technology that the employees use on a daily basis is extremely outdated
- as management has changed, turnover has grown significantly
- low morale
- insane hours with the expectation that one will work from home at night and over the weekends

Advice to Senior Management – I think management needs to be more involved in the day to day work and to show the willingness to learn from their employees. When large changes are being talked about and implemented, letting the affected employees know prior to the change taking place would be quite welcomed. Stop having quarterly company meetings that provides the employees with little to no applicable information.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GSI Commerce

Pros – Pay is ok to decent.
Benefits are average to slightly better than average.
Free bagels on Wednesdays.
Free beer on Friday.

Cons – Inexperienced senior management.
Total lack of communications from senior management.
Monthly department re-orgs.
Development will be outsourced within the year, so woking here is essentially a temp job
HR has totally wussed out and letting rampant violations go unnoticed

Advice to Senior Management – When the recruiter calls you about this place - don't walk - RUN!
It's a lousy environment and you will be outsourced in the next 6 months if you last that long.

To Rubin & the board - you got rid of a mediocre CIO (who thought this was a Fortune 100 company and didn't innovate) and replaced him with a worse CIO (who is not even an employee of the company - hello conflict of interest) who hires his relatives into important positions, who maintains an organization with a top secret org chart, who promotes people who are unqualified, who fires or exiles people who disagree with him, who talks a good game but is dismantling everything you have built over the last ten years. Wake up and get an operationally competent CIO in here fast before it is too late!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GSI Commerce

Pros – Great industry space.
Cutting edge technology segment.
Growing industry.
Great clients.
Decent discounts.
Free Beer on Fridays.
Free Bagels every week.
Flexible hours and WFH options

Cons – *Bad Management.
*Top Heavy organization.
* Lack of good and experienced leaders.
* ETB is run and managed by a start up guy with no strategy, running this like a small start-up!.
* Lack of leaders from a fortune company that can set vision and move GSI forward.
* No clear strategy or direction communicated.
* This place is like a building without foundation.
* High nepotism for a public company. Friends and family of ETB Sr Management in key positions in the company, this is at the cost of some smart and hard working employees.
* Remaining others in key positions are people who are just "yes men" and they are most likely well connected to someone in senior management.
* Lack of any clear process.
* ETB Senior Management is not transparent to employees & too many closed door secrets.
* No organizational Charts, just promises!, Lip Service with no actions or policy.
* No career path.
* No accountability, those VP's/directors who failed!,end up in other VP positions to deliver something else that they failed to deliver earlier.
* No clear HR policy. HR virtually absent!.
* Salary is average, but no bonus and perks for anyone below directors. Though real work is done by lower levels.
*Very few smart and deserving people in the top and middle management.
*People with merit hardly get far.
*Employees are treated very badly by inexperienced Managers that have graduated from college only a few years back. Even complaints to the HR do not work. Those bad managers often end up with more power. They have no leadership qualities but they get promoted into key leadership positions.
*Very few managers here understand the value of team work and respecting employees. managers saying or doing the right things are sidelined quickly by the well influenced. Inefficient and pure "smooth talkers" get promoted at a fast pace. Its status quo for deserving employees.

Advice to Senior Management – To Rubin, You have built a great company !! but if you really love your employees and care for the future of this company and employees wake up!, Its failing very fast, because of bad decisions that few people are making and a lack of strategy. If you really mean the things you say at the company meetings and "prime time shows" about employees, please talk to your technology team and meet with your staff in a town hall forum i.e. with no VP's or directors around. Then you will learn the truth. We doubt if you really understand or if you have been given the correct information by your execs. Most people currently opposing the connected get fired. Please bring leaders with real experience not people that claim to have worked in "many or 10" companies in the past in "senior management" roles. Please don't get start up guys again, this is not a start up!.
Great companies are built by knowledgebale people and happy employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GSI Commerce

Pros – * It's a paycheck
* There are a few good people that are a pleasure to work with
* Not much else

Cons – I have never worked at or even heard of a company that cares less about its employees than this place. You will be worked to the point of complete exhaustion. 80+ hour weeks are the norm and are expected. In our field of IT it is normal to work some extra hours from time to time but at GSI the workload is borderline insane. If you are sick, on vacation, at a funeral, getting married, it doesn't matter, GSI expects you to be working through it all.

And the reward for all this hard work? More work. Top performers are just given more to do so they can help compensate for the rest of the folks who don't know what they are doing. There is little recognition for putting forth a heroic effort and when they do offer you something it is downright insulting.

Promotions seem to be based more on who went to college with who and who is someones drinking buddy rather than actual merit and performance.

Everyone you speak to is unhappy here, and the only reason most folks stay is because the job market is so bad right now, when that turns around people will be running out the door.

Advice to Senior Management – You really need to start to look after your employees and start to show signs that you really care. The benfits package is solidly on the low end of the spectrum when compared to similar companies. Something has to be done soon to address the hours you make people work. We can't attract top talent as it is because of the sweat shop reputation this place has, and once some good people start leaving you aren't going to be able to replace them very easily with the environment you foster.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GSI Commerce

Pros – Decent pay,
but most importantly free first hand learning on most prominent organizational anti-patterns; Cash cow, Design by Committee, Management by perkele, Moral hazard, Mushroom management, Stovepipe, Vendor lock-in to name a few.

Cons – - Most unusual combination of technology (or lack of it) will make your profile unmarketable after few years.
 - Highly ineffective development practices makes it one of the least efficient organization yet it manages to suck personal life out of you.

Advice to Senior Management – Be honest and open to the employees

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GSI Commerce

Pros – - exposure to everything and anything on e-commerce biz
- energetic place
- a good place to experiment with ideas when presented well and collaborate on making them become a reality is rewarding
- wealth of discount perks from partners' promotions

Cons – - Performance Reviews are absolutely phony, false, and not even measuring against objectives but an opinion of the area executive who you interface every quarter are what are endorsed by the HR here
- too many VPs (approx. 50! and growing) in a small org. (only $1 Bil revenue) when other much bigger firms don't have as half as many
- internal squabbling among Exec VPs/SVPs so you can never please all just because of who your role is aligned with
- too many egoes instead of true, blue leadership in harmony: left foot has no clue on the right foot while foot soldiers are scurrying off dutifully on what they're assigned and ask no questions as to "why"
- middle managers just follow marching orders for job security and no valiant display to make things better because they know their neck (not their VP/SVP/EVP's neck) would be on the line

Advice to Senior Management – Need to reduce excessive focus on external PR tasks like "Undercover Boss" and misleading Press Releases to investor community and increase focus on getting the business corrected....too many skeletons in the closet (ex-customers, ex-employees) will inevitably hurt the company as it is a tight-knit industry and people do talk once they leave the company either as a customer or an employee. "What comes around goes around".

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GSI Commerce

Pros – GSI is always breaking new ground with solutions and technology. Clients are continually wowed by their capabilities and new offerings.

Cons – Leadership doesn't always make the best decisions for the people who are dealing directly with the client. We are often left answering for choices made by leadership to which we were not privy. My experience was that leadership made decisions far in advance, but did not communicated until the last minute creating stress and hardship for a lot of people. If you don't work at headquarters don't expect to feel like part of the GSI team.

Advice to Senior Management – Try to make the many many companys that have been aquired by GSI feel like part of the larger team. There's a lack of true cohesion that is felt by most everyone who doesn't reside at KOP.