Overstock.com Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

Very liberal work enviroment with freedom to make decisions. A lot of learning opportunities. Positive work enviroment with great morale, a lot of influencial dynamic people to work with. Challenging, yet rewarding job responsibilities. Executives and upper level management are fair and conduct themselves in an exemplary manner. They are personable and are great to work for. Compensation and bonuses are great. Benefits and 401K are also great.

Cons

Advancement opportunities are hard to come by in this company. Occasionally, there can be a lack of communication and support from direct managers. Lacking a formal training class and cirriculum for new hires as it relates to the individual jobs. Time off days for new hires less than 2 years should be a day or two more than what is currently offered.

Pros

Great people and awesome location if you are into Skiing.

Cons

Erratic decision processes at the upper management level and the fear of the 4th quarter

Pros

Overstock has a very open feeling to it. It's easy to make friends, be yourself, and not worry about trivial office problems. They give good training, and it's easy to settle in to the job. Getting days off isn't too difficult, and raises aren't impossible to earn.

Cons

Upper management are too obsessed with themselves to sit down and make a logical decision. Oftentimes a decision is made that would detriment the customers just to satisfy an executive's pride. The job is fine, as long as you stay away from upper management.

Pros

401K, lagoon day, private concert every October, car pool incentive. My co workers in the call center were all really nice people and I am very glad I met them.

Cons

Mandatory Overtime!! It doesn't matter if you have a baby sitter issue or whatever they will let you know about an hour before your shift ends that you have to stay for a few hours and that if you don't you can look for a job elsewhere. Unless you are a relative of upper management you will not go anywhere with this company. It is a good stepping stone and you really just have to use it as such. Get in, get some experience and move on.

Pros

Work from home, as well as beautiful campus. JJ is a good leader

Cons

Constant change of upper management with a philosophy of 'their way or the highway' No clear direction

Pros

Fun environment. New building. Tons of amenities. 401k plan is more generous than most. Cool events.

Cons

Frequent broken promises. e.g. Don't ever rely on getting a bonus. Upper management is always looking at the next big thing and leave other ideas partially implemented and broken.

Pros

I enjoyed the team I worked with, but the company as a whole is corrupt and full of politics.

Cons

Previous reviews on here are obviously from within the company and upper management. Coming from someone that knows the inner-workings and what it's really like to work at overstock.com, it is painfully obvious that the good reviews on here are a sham. If you notice they suddenly pop up when negative reviews appear and there are just enough to push the bad reviews off of the first page. I'm sure they'll do it again once this post goes up. Sexism, chauvinism and favoritism run rampant through this company. Employees who are qualified to do the work are rarely recognized, and friends of upper-management are often promoted to positions they have not earned or are incapable of doing.

Pros

As has been mentioned in other real reviews, work/life balance is generally good The people you work with (not Management) are fun and passionate If you are lucky enough to work under a good manager life can be pretty good

Cons

Upper Management has no clue how to grow a billion dollar company. How they manage this site is a great example of that. They are constantly worried about their image and try to manage it. For example: - They have their sycophant underlings post positive reviews to bring up their scores. At least half of the positive reviews on this site are of that nature - They constantly remind employees in company standups how great the company is and encourage them to post positive reviews here. I guess if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it?? - They respond to negative reviews here by blaming the reviewers. (Why is the CEO answering posts on Glassdoor?? How about managing the Company instead) You don't make a company a good place to work by managing your image. You make it a good place to work by what you do each day, how you treat your employees and how you improve your company. The fact that Management obsesses over this site instead of doing their real job should tell you everything you need to know about how much they focus on the wrong things. Because 'loyalty' to the CEO or President is more important then skill most of upper Management is just plain incompetent in their business areas. This is very frustrating for regular employees because you constantly have to work with people that have no idea how areas like Marketing, Merchandizing, etc should really be run. Regular employees keep things running but with the mounting frustration of having to constantly manage the people above you it wears on their moral and eventually they leave. They have had a huge exodus of really bright, competent people the last couple of years. Money is constantly wasted on pet projects by the CEO or President. The company has been stuck at about the same level for years, not because the employees don't do their jobs but because they are often working on projects that don't grow the company. All the big projects in the last few years have not really made the company any money. People don't like working on projects that seem of little to no value except to gain approval from the CEO or President.

Pros

If you like to Ski, hike some of the best in the country is only 20-30 min from the office and they are in need of many Java developers and QA. You will not get overworked unless you want. The non management employees are all nice people and fun to work with. Most are highly skilled but underutilized. The pay for developers is fair for the middle of the country. - Housing (renting) is very reasonable and very negotiable in SLC area. - Great outdoor activities very close to work - Traffic, what traffic? - Easy to live 10-15 min from office - Great Skiing, Hiking very close to everything. - Everything is 30min away including Park City which is a very commutable distance. - Other tech companies are moving into SLC such as Google, EBay, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft

Cons

The company sells its self as a mature company with lots of potential for growth and profitability yet Sr Management is unexperienced and behaves like an early stage startup. An example of this how often they re-organise which is about as often as the wind changes direction. You just might get moved out to SLC and find yourself re-orginized out of a job with no return ticket. The separation is two weeks pay + unused vacation. - Don't sell you house if you are moving to SLC from afar, rent it. - Once you start, forget what they told you during the interview process. They are not looking for any constructive criticism or input for improvement to their systems. Keep your head low, do you job as asked and no more. - If you have not been there for 4-5+ years your an outsider. Remember this. - Vacation time is 15 days but that includes your sick days. Don't get sick or go to work when your sick. - 401k does not start for 6 months - Do not make yourself known at the SVP level. If they don't like you or have a bad day, your gone quicker than a roll of the dice in Vegas. It does not matter how much value you have added in the past. - Winter pollution inversions are just nasty. Worst air in the country for this entire week. - If you have kids the public schools in UT (Other than Park City) are about as bad as they get. So you will have to look into one of the two high end public schools both of which are about $15k/year/child. The other private schools seem to only be a bit better than the public schools but nothing like the schools on either coast and are religiously oriented. - The moving bonus requires you to stay for a year or pay it back. - Most of the upper management have only worked at Overstock or perhaps one other company after getting out of school. They do not understand how the rest of the world operates have have a very ignorant view of it. - Huge culture shock if you are not a member of the XXX Church. - If you are a really smart creative person, you will not have the opportunity to express yourself here. - If you need a job for a year it might be a place to work until the economy gets better. - You might want to not accept any 'moving bonus' which would give you the flexibility of leaving when you want.

Pros

Colleagues and team member relationships can be amazing. There are some really good employees (lower management and teammates). A job there can look good on a resume. Family can come in on Halloween to trick or treat and they are invited to bring family to see Santa and get free photos at Christmas time as well as cookies and little activities or prizes; it's something really special for a lot of younger children and their families. They have a day at the amusement park, Lagoon, where employees and their families come when the park is reserved for this company only; no long lines due to public or other groups besides OSTK employees being at the park. It's really the best Lagoon experience one could have AND they raffle prizes and have other fun things available to do. There is also a concert the company pays for which may not always be friendly to entire family (i.e. children), but are good date nights or fun for adults. -keep in mind when they ask the company to vote on who should come in concert that that your vote only counts if you choose the same performer as the company president. Once votes for a different artist surpass votes for her preference, the votes are no longer counted. I guess the pro to that is at least you feel like your input was important and considered.). There are also other fun activities at work throughout the year for different occasions. So there are fun things that happen here. Keep in mind, these are special activities that happen occasionally. They are far different than most regular work days.

Cons

There are definitely more cons than pros at this company. To provide a comprehensive list would take a lot of time and work. So I will highlight some of the worst reasons for being at this company. The president manages through fear, humiliation, manipulation and emotion. She holds onto grudges, and rarely lets go no matter how bad it may be for the company. Power and ego for her seem more important than being successful. She makes some poor decisions in haste due to her emotions, which run her versus her controlling her emotions. She's not an entirely bad person; she does have some good, but she is full of rage and pointless anger and will direct it in any undeserved direction at any time. It's a very unhealthy place-emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Many in upper management are poor at being organized and distributing a handable amount of work with reasonable and realistic time expectations. Then when you can't do the work of a non-human superhero, they blame YOU that something is done poorly rather than recognizing they give too much work and not enough time to complete it and do it well. The pay, which was supposedly going to improve (and has for some, but not equally or fairly amongst the workforce) is bad. Besides a few job positions, you can expect to be underpaid compared to the industry average. The work life balance is good for some positions. Others, it's non-existent. If they want something it doesn't matter where you are or what tragic or important thing might be taking place, their wants come before your life needs (this is for some upper, upper management). Say what they may, nepotism IS an absolute part of this company. If a rebuttal is coming from the head of people care, I'll just say now that my issues and concerns were discussed with multiple people in HR and even you were aware of problems but did nothing about it. Also for the rebuttal about how the President isn't any of these bad things listed and is great and that work life balance is wonderful, anyone close to the situation knows the reality of the situation and that you're doing your job and trying to defend and positively reflect the company and the president in a positive light as well as making the company seem like an awesome place to work. If you didn't say these things, I can only imagine how horrible things would be for you personally. I'd do the same things in your shoes to avoid the wrath and fiery inferno that would come your way. Yes, there are good things; it's not all bad. But the bad clearly outweighs the positives. Say what you want, people care people. For anyone who actually chooses to come work there, they will in time see things as they really are as well as the sugar coating the management does to protect their image.