Starbucks Reviews in Seattle, WA Area

Pros

There are great opportunities for advancement, heath insurance, perks card(cheap movie tickets, concerts, discounts at restaurants, ect...) Senior management seems to have a good head on their shoulders. People are mostly fun to work with!

Cons

Customers are a little rough sometimes. And although my overall satisfaction with the company is very satisfied there are people in the company that make me question why they even have a job let alone run a store. My direct manager is a bit of a tool, for instance if given the number 49 and asked what percent that is of 70, this individual wouldn't know how to go about finding it. (49/70=70% for those of you wondering) My manager who is responsible for roughly a million dollar business seriously asked me that very question, although it was with much larger numbers as they were pertaining to the quarterly budget. All said, if this were the only person that I had worked with in Starbucks I would have an entirely different opinion, and as one can clearly see most of the people within the company are more competent as the stock price closed at 49.20 today!

Advice to Senior Management

I would say that senior management needs to value their store partners more. Pay them more, they put up with a lot from very demanding customers and work their tails off to keep the stores clean and provide legendary service. In my opinion and probably the more important reason to pay store partners more is to attract and retain higher quality people. There have been some quality high caliber people that have left the company due to poor pay and broken promises along the way. I also realize it is somewhat inevitable that this will happen when you have people involved in anything.

Pros

Real people - grounded
Great people to work with
Company is very focused on their "partners" (employees)
Free pound of coffee every week! Woot!
Great place to have a career

Cons

IT Department is seriously lacking good management
Starbucks does COFFEE - not technology
Decisions by consensus - makes for insanely slow decisions/progress
The most passive/aggressive place I've ever seen in 20 years of employment

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees - 3rd party consultants aren't always the DEFACTO truth / best option
Let go of "this is how we've always done it". That attitude is going to ruin Starbucks
Change is GOOD.

Pros

co-workers and customers were wonderful

Cons

district level management and above only interested in profit

Advice to Senior Management

put people first again. starbucks was once a place to be very proud of working at.

Pros

Good benefits, competitive salary, customer-focused

Cons

Highly political, undisciplined mid-management, overly collaborative culture

Advice to Senior Management

set some clear goals and eliminate barriers to project success

Pros

The benefits
The hours
The flexibility
The opportunities for promotion

Cons

There is a lot of passive management by exception in the low level management positions within stores. A lot of people are promoted with little leadership or management education.

Advice to Senior Management

Offer training for shift supervisors in management.

Pros

- Amazing place for people that want to be respected and appreciated by peers and managers
 - Plenty of opportunities to grow and learn as a finance person (if you are a people person)
 - Great senior leaders that actually do care about you as a person

Cons

- The pay is beyond sub-par and does not come close to representing the overall Seattle pay structure for finance people. In fact, as a finance person, we are paid 30% less than someone in marketing at the same pay grade
 - The systems are falling apart and completely unreliable
 - The benefts are tied to the field partners, which means a professional cannot earn more vacation or have better medical than someone in the store

Advice to Senior Management

It's time to acknowledge the reality that our peers in other Seattle based companies earn more than we do for the same (or even less) work. As painful as it may be, the company needs to recongnize that professional talent in the HQ deserves better benefits, even if parity with the field is no longer possible.

Pros

Contribute to the greater good of the world. It isn't just about profit.

Cons

The job security feeling could be improved.

Advice to Senior Management

Work on making your employees feel secure in their jobs.

Pros

Benefits, people, workers, atmosphere are the best aspect when working for this great coffee company. The free employee drinks are nice.

Cons

Little flexibility in schedule and training. Customers can be quite rude and the increase in pay is usually less than hoped for

Advice to Senior Management

Keep hiring within. When hiring managers with no Starbucks experience they are less likely to stay and also instill a positive working environment.

Pros

I worked at the corporate office in Seattle. Starbucks is very LGBT friendly. If you're LGBT, this is a great company to work for. If you're a woman, this is a great company to work for. Their policies about harassment are extremely fair and professional. Oh, there are espresso machines in all the break rooms with syrups and whipped cream just like in the stores.

Cons

Starbucks is past their boom years, and they took a beating in the crash. I think that they'll pull themselves back up, but the creative jobs are probably even harder to get into than they used to be, and they've always been really tough and competitive.

Advice to Senior Management

I think that outsourcing the Customer Contact Center was an error. Any representative of Starbucks that faces customers should be a Starbucks partner. You had an opportunity to use what customer service reps know about your customer base to help shape marketing strategies for greater success. No one has ever really done that before. Marketing gets feedback from customer service, but since they're only interested in hearing that their promotions were successful, any marketing person will shun advice from a contact center that knows how their customer base will react.

Pros

Howard is an incredibly visionary and capable leader. The company is very ethically run and it's involvement in helping community, both for our coffee and tea farmers and for the places that host our stores is beyond compare.

Cons

Not a lot of opportunity in IT. Few promotions and each time a new VP comes in, they are very biased against inside talent.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management needs to be more hands on in promoting our core values across all levels of management when it comes to valuing internal talen.