How are career development opportunities at Mary Kay?

Make your own hours, advancement opportunities, great opportunity to make a little or a lot of money, earn free cars, learn leadership skills, unlimited training, new friends and Faith based company-Faith, family, career…Mary Ash built a company based on the Golden Rule and has been in business 60 years!

You don’t get paid if you don’t work

The company provides wonderful training opportunities for business and personal growth

You can end up working 24/7 if you don't have good time management skills, but this would be up to the individual contractor, not Mary Kay itself

The people who are left are amazing but their time is coming... Everyone knows it but they are doing their best with what they have left.

The layoffs are frequent, without warning, and without communication. They continue to lay off tremendously bright and wonderful people who have given their whole career to MK only to be left with extremely subpar severance packages. The benefits continue to worsen. They used to be Best in Class. Now they are average at best. Even with the layoffs, there's not much career advancement possible.

It was a stable job with a great culture and promising career growth opportunities—until the pandemic. The benefits were excellent, the business was thriving, and I considered my co-workers my work family. There was a healthy work-life balance, and overall employee morale was high. This was the place I wanted to continue working, constantly learning new skills, putting in extra effort, and taking on additional responsibilities. Through merit, I earned several career advancements. I had envisioned building my career here long-term and eventually retiring with the company. Then the pandemic hit hard. Despite everyone's best efforts to adapt and maintain performance, the damage was done.

After the pandemic, the company struggled to fully recover. The chosen approach was to restructure and cut budgets, leading to layoffs. Stability disappeared, along with any certainty about the future. Despite these changes, the company remains top-heavy. The culture has become toxic, driven by cliques and favoritism. Success is often based on who you know and whether you are liked. When solutions to problems are proposed, they are frequently ignored—especially if they might upset those who are part of the problem but also belong to the favored group. As a result, issues persist, never truly being resolved. Despite executives' efforts to implement change, they rely on the judgment and opinions of leadership, which are often biased by personal favoritism rather than the actual needs of the business. Another major concern is how layoffs are handled. Employees who were let go were treated like trespassers, creating a sense that they had done something wrong rather than being victims of financial cuts. Adding to the distress, layoffs tend to happen right before the holidays, making an already difficult situation even more painful for those affected.

Not really all that great

Not much room for advancement

Benefits, career growth, friendly people, great leadership.

Salary, work from home only on Fridays

Some good products, training on par with professional standards.

No professional qualifications, no official recognised certification. Income from sales alone does not give you a full income, you are responsible for all costs and expenses, this includes packaging & postage for orders from the company as well as costs to deliver to your customers. You have to put in minimum amount of purchases to qualify for commissions, so if you have customers buying under this minimum, you do not receive the wholesale discount, you have to buy more products to get the commission otherwise you pay full retail price! You do not get paid a salary based on hours worked, no career advancement without recruiting, which makes this a pyramid scheme. You do not run your own business, you’re not an Independent Contractor or a Business Owner, the business is owned by the Rogers Family who own Mary Kay Inc, they make the decisions on what products to sell, what the branding looks like, what the price point is, what promotions to run, they own the organisation, not the sales reps.

Despite the low rating, I will say that I experienced work-life balance during my time at Mary Kay.

Buckle up, we're going for a long drive. I was initially so excited to start working at Mary Kay, an iconic brand known for its strong values. However, upon my first day after orientation, I discovered that the position sold to me during the interview process was very different from the actual work I was expected to perform day-in and day-out. Additionally, the environment was not very welcoming. One downside to folks working decades at the same company is that they become complacent and threatened when someone new with more experience and skills comes along. This is what I experienced firsthand. It was such a contrast to my NEO experience, that I started crying in my office after returning from the positive orientation experience. The lack of collaboration, communication, and professionalism in my work environment sometimes even bordered on hostile. I started going to therapy due to the lack of respect I was experiencing in the workplace because it was truly affecting my confidence and mental health. When I told my counselor where I worked, she said, "Oof. Yes, I've heard the Mary Kay environment is pretty rough." It was really validating to hear that. I share my experience to give someone a full picture before they decide to work here. I have never experienced so much toxic positivity in a workplace before. It may have just been the particular department I worked in, but good work was not rewarded. Instead, seniority is the only thing that gains you recognition. Even if the methods these folks use are ineffective and even counterproductive, wasting company time and money.

It was a stable job with a great culture and promising career growth opportunities—until the pandemic. The benefits were excellent, the business was thriving, and I considered my co-workers my work family. There was a healthy work-life balance, and overall employee morale was high. This was the place I wanted to continue working, constantly learning new skills, putting in extra effort, and taking on additional responsibilities. Through merit, I earned several career advancements. I had envisioned building my career here long-term and eventually retiring with the company. Then the pandemic hit hard. Despite everyone's best efforts to adapt and maintain performance, the damage was done.

After the pandemic, the company struggled to fully recover. The chosen approach was to restructure and cut budgets, leading to layoffs. Stability disappeared, along with any certainty about the future. Despite these changes, the company remains top-heavy. The culture has become toxic, driven by cliques and favoritism. Success is often based on who you know and whether you are liked. When solutions to problems are proposed, they are frequently ignored—especially if they might upset those who are part of the problem but also belong to the favored group. As a result, issues persist, never truly being resolved. Despite executives' efforts to implement change, they rely on the judgment and opinions of leadership, which are often biased by personal favoritism rather than the actual needs of the business. Another major concern is how layoffs are handled. Employees who were let go were treated like trespassers, creating a sense that they had done something wrong rather than being victims of financial cuts. Adding to the distress, layoffs tend to happen right before the holidays, making an already difficult situation even more painful for those affected.

The people who are left are amazing but their time is coming... Everyone knows it but they are doing their best with what they have left.

The layoffs are frequent, without warning, and without communication. They continue to lay off tremendously bright and wonderful people who have given their whole career to MK only to be left with extremely subpar severance packages. The benefits continue to worsen. They used to be Best in Class. Now they are average at best. Even with the layoffs, there's not much career advancement possible.