Blue Nile Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Blue Nile full-time

Pros – Flexible hours
Understanding management
Respect of work-life balance (sometimes)
Relaxed environment

Cons – No great direction
Changing strategy
Quarter to quarter management and foresight

Advice to Senior Management – Invest more in infrastructure and people

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile full-time for less than a year

Pros – Good experience for a young professional looking to work in either e-commerce or for a corporate company.

Cons – My department was spread very thin to say the least. Essentially, when I was hired on I was in charge of the entire special orders side of engagement and wedding rings. I had minimal training at best and my boss was very unhelpful and often rude or in a terrible mood, making asking questions seem like a minefield. It's possible that she was miserable in her own role but it was terrible working under her.

The amount of special orders/emails/tasks was impossible for one person to manage. I was often overwhelmed and stressed. I wasn't given a lot of guidance but punished when mistakes happened. It's apparent that Blue Nile doesn't really value their employees and only really cares about the bottom line. I think the work/life balance was not communicated clearly either...which there basically isn't any. You work all the time for less money than other companies and aren't valued as an employee.

Advice to Senior Management – Take the time to really train your new employees and make sure they have a firm grasp on their job and role within the company. Don't treat people as disposable. If you invest in your employees I think you'll be a more successful company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile full-time for less than a year

Pros – Relaxed atmosphere
Majority of callers are actually nice
Internet usage not strictly monitored/limited
No micromanagement

Cons – Unequal treatment of employees
Lack of training

Advice to Senior Management – As a company that is expanding globally, equal representation of all races and cultures in your employment pool would be a benefit to the consumer calling in. The fact that the majority of your consultants and order processing personnel are of one specific race and you have a distinct lack of representation of another race is something I always found disturbing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile

Pros – Dedicated, intelligent employees. Employees genuinely want to see the company succeed and put in many hours to do just that. You are surrounded by many smart people and will very likely walk away learning a lot.

Cons – The company is run so lean, that those same employees are stretched thin and burn out quickly. There is little to no reward for that effort. The issues have been identified by executives, but very little was done to truly fix it at the root of the problem. The increased turnover and falling trust in company leadership could have been avoided. There are many people in leadership positions who are good at what they do, but need to be given the tools to truly lead and manage people. Good leaders are not only smart, but know how to support and motivate people.

Advice to Senior Management – Appreciate your employees. Reward their hard work and create a fun atmosphere. It’s okay to step away from spreadsheets for a break and even a smile. They deserve it. Focus on gaining their trust. Don’t make changes at the surface that won’t last. Build up the foundation and give people a reason to stick around.

Current Employee – been working at Blue Nile full-time

Pros – People are really smart and VERY hard working. Love that you could wear many hats since the teams are pretty small. Room to learn a lot.

Cons – No room for growth and management was too busy to really manage the team. People put in a lot of work hours during the holiday times and most were underpaid. If you are looking for a work/life balance or a fun and outgoing company culture..Blue Nile is not the right place for that. Not many good social events and everyone is too busy to care about anything else but work. They tried to change things recently due to high turnover.

Advice to Senior Management – Work on communication, goals and take some management training sessions. Take time to actually manage your team when you can.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile full-time for less than a year

Pros – Some of the people there were great. Lots of lunch options in the area. Fun to work in fulfillment for a day or two around christmas.

Cons – More managers than peers. Lots of first-timers - kids out of college willing to work for peanuts because they don't know better. Lots of old-timers - people who were with the company from the beginning and care only about their stock options. As I was neither, they set me up on a project they use to eliminate people so they could bump their short-term financials and prevent me from vesting. I did a lot of interesting and useful work for them, but they treated me as disposable. If I wasn't a good fit for them, they could have simply told me instead of creating a ridiculous scenario over which to fire me.

Their site looks unchanged from a decade ago. Their front-end code is ancient VB written by non-coders.

Advice to Senior Management – Too many managers and junior engineers. Why not hire some pros and treat them well instead of creating a lords and serfs environment? If your engineer tells you a project is untenable, listen to them and move on. Treat people like people, not stepping stones.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile

Pros – In exchange for lower pay, Blue Nile is willing to give employees positions or titles that they would ordinarily not have. If you're looking to take on a more senior role but just can't get that in your current company, Blue Nile may be what you're looking for. Be careful not to stay here too long though. Build the resume and credentials and leverage that into an equivalent position at a better company.

Cons – Blue Nile prides itself on keeping costs down and being lean. However, this often results in penny wise, pound foolish behavior. Employees are routinely paid 15% - 20% below market rate and are given stock option packages that haven't proven to be of any value. In addition, every department is severely understaffed which means that you'll work 50-60 hours every week doing pretty mindless and repetitive work because there just aren't the people around to spread the work around or automate things. As a result, there's very little time to reflect and think a little more strategically.

Advice to Senior Management – Senior Management comes off as disingenuous and clueless. Stop being disingenuous to employees. If you say you're going to invest in people - you need to follow that up with action otherwise you look really dishonest. Also, radical changes in strategic direction are pretty toxic and make it look like you don't know what you're doing. When you say that the company needs to do less of X and more of Y, you can't come back 2 months later and totally contradict that. You end up looking crazy.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – Your expectations as an employee are cut and dry. If you can meet those, you will have no problems.

Cons – Chaotic internal structure. Management proved manic and at times unprofessional. Hours are completely up and down, and lunch hours aren't set in stone. *sometimes its 30 min sometimes they make you take an hour, so you can stay longer in the day). Pay is also fairly low.

Advice to Senior Management – reduce stress on seasonal laborers, and you will have a better worker who is willing to go father.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Blue Nile as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Location, good entry level pay, friendly co-workers, medium sized company, looks good on résumé.

Cons – Groupthink/design by committee mentality, micromanaging of staff, unrealistic standards and overly optimistic outlook, poor leadership skills exhibited by company leaders and general incompetence among a select handful of those in upper management.

Advice to Senior Management – Success is measured in dollars at Blue Nile. The health of employee's seems to be a secondary concern. There is a general lack of compassion held by those in management, changing this could only be an improvement. It would also be nice if leadership would politely remove their rose-colored glasses — If your employees are telling you there are problems then there probably are and you should take them into consideration.

Also, want to reduce your one designer per month turnover? Try letting people do their jobs and being there to support them. Instead of micromanaging and then blaming employees for delays, missed deadlines, and other shortcomings just let them do what you hired them to do. You have talented, competent designers, if you drop the design by committee mentally, and let them do their jobs your entire business would benefit and you wouldn't lose designers nearly as often.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Blue Nile

Pros – Smaller company, more opportunities.
New industry, new market and new business model.
It is expanding international business, nice work experience.
Good company culture.

Cons – People from different departments are only focus on their own short-term goal. Employees don't clearly know the common long-term goal or company's competitive strategies.

Advice to Senior Management – More team activities. Let employees know company's short-term and long-term goals. Work at the same page. More cross-department communication. More feedback about work performance.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend