Wayfair Reviews

I have been working at Wayfair full-time for less than a year

Pros – The working atmosphere is is good. Colleagues are willing to help.
Flat management hierarchy. Manager are supportive.

Cons – There are still some old technology in use (but quickly being replaced by new technology)

Advice to Senior Management – More technology learning sessions

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Wayfair full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good place to start career if interested in e-commerce, but not for long haul. They are doing lots of interesting things to build Wayfair brand and there appears to be a lot of opportunity to move around in organization.

Cons – Job changed significantly from what I thought I was getting into. Things changed often, but not always for the better. Lot of new technology being rolled out, but it wasn't always tested properly before it was launched and it got very frustrating to find things were not working when they were supposed to. Company touted its entrepreneurial spirit but it became more and more bureaucratic. Also, pay was way lower than industry average. Not the best place for working parents.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Wayfair full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – - Finally back to massive growth mode after the re-branding
- Growing, dynamic industry
- Fast pace
- Tons of responsibility and autonomy
- Salaries competitive with local market
- Equity/stock for everyone

Cons – - Limited formal learning and development programs
You have to fish around for good mentors (in addition to your immediate manager) and really need to drive your own career path

Advice to Senior Management – Invest more in people. You’ve made good strides the last few years but have a ways to go. Get a real learning and development team in place. Also, while most departments now earn market rate compensation and enjoy great benefits, weed out the pockets in the org where comp is still low relative to market. If you can’t afford to, then move those jobs out of Boston to somewhere where cost-of-living is lower.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Wayfair full-time for more than a year

Pros – -interesting work w/ strong ownwership and responsibility
-good people and company culture encouraging a work/life balance; very young
-weekly one on one meetings with your direct manages to review work and development
-reward top performers with compensation; some departments have put a strong emphasis on employee compensation
-lots of PTO, adds up quickly over time
-lots of independence

Cons – -while you have the opportunity to learn a lot with so much responsibility, there is not much true career development
-many of the strategies seem to be very reactionary, comes from working at a fast pace, but means that you have to be ready to throw out your current goals and completely switch direction at a moment's notice

Advice to Senior Management – Invest more in employee salaries to discourage talented people to leave. Each time a position turns over, we waste time to find a replacement and train them.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Wayfair full-time for less than a year

Pros – I met some cool people there. I liked the book club. The HR department was top notch.

Cons – Nearly all tasks are isolated short tasks. Working at Wayfair is to software engineering what working in a factory is to architecture. Think about that.

The company's highest level likes to think of Wayfair as a "meritocracy", but anyone that understands hierarchy and power knows that meritocracies cannot exist. Power, no matter how it is acquired, begets power and thus all meritocracies instantly degenerate into power based hierarchies, where merit no longer plays a role. Wayfair is no different.

The software code-base is a mess. Things are badly organized because the top guy worked that way when it is was a tiny company and he doesn't seem to comprehend that what works for him does not work for everyone, even programmers that are better than he is.

Anyway, I soon came to realize that sleeping at my desk was the most likely future before me, so I quit.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of all of your managers and hire professionals.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Wayfair full-time for more than a year

Pros – snacks, event tickets, cool co-workers, centrally located, good entry-level position.

Cons – mindless repetitive work, poor mid-level managers who are not promoted on merit but on subjective management protocol, i.e. they like you or they don't- has nothing to do with your work ethic.

Advice to Senior Management – Come up with some objective goals in order to allow people to advance. "flying by the seat of your pants" is no way to manage a company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Wayfair full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The Pros...
- Great location in Back Bay
- Some really great managers
- Interesting work
- Lots of responsibility
- Lots of opportunity to change departments and roles
- Monthly pod outings where $20-30 is allotted to employees for food/drinks
- Great quarterly meetings/parties, a great summer party, and an amazing holiday party
- Lots of Paid Time Off
- A fair amount of flexibility with sick days and call-outs
- Potential for great Work/Life balance
- You can win free sporting games and theater/opera tickets
- Very young workforce with a lot of great people
- Laid back dress code; shorts ARE now allowed, as of last year
- Free snacks/coffee/tea/water and cheap soda/juice

...and The Counters
- The location is great, but unless the MBTA closes the office doesn't closed (even if it's blizzarding) so if you live on the T you'll likely have to hike it in to the office (especially in Customer Service - there's a lot more flexibility outside of the department [as someone who's seen it on both sides] but it can get rough quickly.)

- For every great manager at Wayfair, there are 6-7 horrible ones. A lot of Wayfair's managers joined the company years ago as their first job out of college, and they've never had prior work experience, or any other frame of reference. It's impossible to operate as Wayfair did in 2007, but a lot of the managers don't realize that. This is a huge problem across every department.

- Interesting work in some departments, very tedious or outright painful work across others

- Lots of responsibility can be a great thing, but a lot of managers heap an unending pile of work on their teams, and it's quite common for a Second (or Third) in Command to actually be running the team/handling the Senior Level workload

- There are a LOT of opportunities to move around in the company, but the vast majority of these moves are lateral. It's VERY rare for someone outside of Senior Management to be able to get a significant promotion (and let's not even get into the pay just yet.) A significant amount of the workforce may move from one Entry Level position to another, without any real boost. "Specialist" roles are sometimes bestowed upon people, but this doesn't translate into real Specialist roles outside the company.

- Lots of Paid Time Off, but especially around the holidays this means that unless you're a super high achiever or close friends with Management that you'll be in the office on Christmas Eve - while everyone Senior has been gone for days.

- The laid back dress code can be great, but it means a sea of sweatshirts, leggings, baseball hats, and ratty t-shirts.

- The "free" snacks are great, until you see how much is actually deducted from your yearly salary to pay for them

- Work/Life balance is a great thing in some departments, and a flat-out lie in others. There are some people (especially managers) who easily work a 35-40 hour work week, while many of the lower level staff (especially Second and Third in Commands) who regularly clock 80 hour weeks, without an end in sight. And this isn't something that affects just a department like Engineering

Cons – - The pay is flat-out abominable. Every department across the board is paid FAR under industry standards. A staggering amount of roles start under $30K, and many departments refuse to even give Standard of Living raises

- It's also excruciatingly difficult to get a raise; some of the few who do have to literally fight tooth and nail for it, and even then there's no change of a remote guarantee. They'll sometimes give title promotions, but money is beyond difficult to attain. However, you'll see some favorites rapidly move up the food chain, while the rest of your coworkers are languishing.

- As mentioned in the Pros section, Management can be staggeringly under-qualified for their roles. Simply being in the company for 5-6 years has absolutely no guarantee of expertise, but that's not the way Wayfair often sees it. Especially for Mid-Level employees coming into the company, seeing how Management works can be horrifying.

- There is NO support for New and Mid-Level Managers. Over the past 4 or so years, HR has attempted to start some trainings, but they've NEVER finished the courses or any of the training. It's all crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

Advice to Senior Management – First and foremost, salaries have GOT to raise. The amount of talented employees that leave due to salary is staggering.

Second, find suitable, dependable, and experienced Management. This also means allocating the needed time, funding, and courses for New and Existing Management.

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

I worked at Wayfair as an intern for less than a year

Pros – great company culture, independent work, flexible hours, increasing responsbility, love the work environment

Cons – growing pains, some work was dull, not a lot of direction from my manager, many company outings were 21+ so it was hard for interns to connect with employees outside of the job

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Wayfair full-time

Pros – - very chill environment
- free snacks and coffee all day long, and foosball table
- no dress code (except that you cannot wear shorts)
- kind of flexible hours
- managers and high up executives are friendly

Cons – - code review process takes more than it should
- technologies used are kind of old, and it's very hard to change from framework A to B

Advice to Senior Management – please keep up the good work and be still nice to everyone as usual.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Wayfair part-time for less than a year

Pros – Great benefits, training was very informative and useful, very flexible hours

Cons – Work space was a little crowded at times

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company