Build.com reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(310 total reviews)

Nicole Creech

52% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

Build.com has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 310 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Build.com employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

310 reviews
1.0
Jul 24, 2015

Get the money

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

On the surface its so Great! i mean Look at all those photos! and 5 Star Reviews! This company invests in trinkets and parties to try and keep their work force enthused! ( not bad parties either) Free fruit.! Good pay for chico. Summer Camp!( hour or 2 long sessions to learn new things! honestly a really great idea) Build Really does have its highlights and can be an excellent workplace, provided you are: - Genuinely a great people person/ have background knowledge about a relevant department/ and are willing to make build.com a part of who you are. As some people I know and still respect with the company. Most however are the kind who found success through - being good at Bull pooping, ping pong, and being that preppy "Bro" who loves drinking beer and talking about himself during work softball games. If this sounds great to you, then please apply. you will likely get the job due to their silly hiring practices, and you may very well be a great fit. To be fair what i have said above and bellow is probably all outdated by now.

Cons

I must say I fully believe the 5 star reviews are only there because someone was encouraged to make build look good. I honestly would rate build 2 or 3 stars but with all the 5 stars which i dont believe to be truthful i feel the need to try and balance the scale. In response to " Build is great if you dedicate hard work." I disagree. Hard work is not enough at build, you will be asked to sacrifice time( mandatory over time the entire 3 years i was employed with build.com), and a little bit of self respect in order to secure some orders. Unless you have no qualms with knowingly deceiving a few customers here and there. The culture that is presented is not very deep. Attempts at being peppy are obviously forced by many including management. Build has a very clique culture, unless you are in with some people, you will get some cold shoulders. Most often i felt under appreciated, even when exceeding goals. Cheated out of pay/promotions. due to someone with connections or an external higher. When i was new I drank the coolaid, I believed the stories of how build was going to be a great place to work moving fast and growing like mad. That moving fast meant the companies policies would change on a dime, one week under 1 manager it was 100% Hands off when training would have been a great benefit. To the extreme of Micromanagement including how your screen should be layed out, and monitoring everything you do on your computer. Along with the feeling of being looked down upon there was the constant reviews, the stress inducing reminder that if your not selling enough, you will be let go, and promptly. Here is where you will be encouraged to curb the truth in order to secure the sale. Many of the highly praised reps would be fired within a couple of months due to proof of shady conduct. The sort of which no company could openly stand by. Their mentality seems to be in line with "Cogs are replaceable" Why do i feel so strongly? -The endless broken promises about mandatory over time and shift accommodations. -The 30 + people fired right before Christmas. -The constant job opportunities which always went to who had the best connections. -The level of greed and alpha male culture in the office is palpable. -The Clique culture which makes you unwelcome. -Constantly instructed to do whatever it takes to "Get the money". "Get the money" was a phrase encouraged in the build.com culture by management and executives. Really.. what sort of customer service should have that as their motto? I understand its a business and also a sales floor..... But Really. If your as Forward thinking as you claim. Why choose to be a company where customer service takes a back seat to money? If you have never worked for a corporation before build will be a little bit of culture shock.

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Build.com Response
9y
Sorry for the delay in this response. For a one star review in your pro-s segment it sounds like you did enjoy your time here for some period. We are definitely a sales focused culture. We balance that by having the highest customer satisfaction scores in the industry for eCommerce, not just home improvement. It sounds like you were deeply hurt here, and for that I am really sorry. 3 years spent on a job is no small endeavor in these times and we appreciate your years of service. I hope you've moved on to a place where you feel more appreciated ( adobe perhaps? ) What I can say is that lots of the suggestions you've made here we've adopted over the last year and have seen significant improvements in employee morale, while still keeping our "get the money" mentality. I wish you the best of luck in your future career, and thank you for the time you spent at Build.com.
2.0
Jun 26, 2017

You will LOVE it here.. at first!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Interesting work Great perks Casual fridays with beer Games Expensive toilets

Cons

Compensation is a complete joke. If you're applying here, you are NOT making a career move.. Build.com is merely a stepping stone and they will pay accordingly (which is way below industry standards, yet still livable for Chico) Tight cliques to crack into.. Prepare to shed your true self in order to conform to the maximum extent possible. Bye-bye work/life balance.. prepare to put in overtime as the norm. Even seasoned employees here are often hourly, not salaried. Time Off.. oh yeah that. Nope, not really. You will be working on a lot of commonly observed holidays. No sick leave for the first year (from what I can remember) Nepotism and favoritism.. You know what it is, and you will see it. You will not like it. It's more important here to conform and be loved, than to perform. The 5th company value needs to catch up to the current decade. Prepare to get fired if things aren't perpetually looking up. This is not a place for the "ups and downs" of life.. They're constantly churning through talented employees. Company culture seems great at first but it's VERY plastic and just plain showy. You are only recognized as the best version of yourself. Humans unfortunately don't work that way. Finally, you are there to sell toilets.. think about this seriously for a moment before you share a laugh about it with your recruiter.

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Build.com Response
8y
First off, thanks for the call out on the perks. We try and differentiate ourselves from other traditional employers by offering lots of perks, games, and a fun work environment. As far as your cons go. Yes, if we sugar coated during the hiring process we failed to communicate that expectations are high and work will be difficult, we failed you. I'll try and address all your issues one by one. First, for opening wages, we've indexed and yes we're above most baselines for starting wages. We are proud of that. As far as cliques go, with over 600 employees, I can promise you that we are not a heterogeneous society! Programmers and salespeople have much different challenges and schedules so you rarely see someone as a pro account manager hanging out with a DBA. Sorry you didn't feel like the company represented what you saw whe nyou started. As far as it being hard to work here and requiring a lot, again we may have failed you in the interviewing process, as even on of our values is work hard / play hard. If you're looking for a position that doesn't require hard work, we likely aren't a good fit for you... As far as your advice to management, during my "How to get ahead" training at Build.com, I try and make it very clear that it is difficult to excel in our company without speaking up. I can't apologize for that as we let everyone know up front. If you want a job to do the minimum, keep your head down, expect proactive promotions, and things to happen for you organically, we likely weren't a good fit for you, and your warnings to others are legitimate. It is very unlikely that the company will change dramatically enough to accommodate what you are looking for in an employer, and I hope you find a place somewhere that suits you well! Thank you for the revivew, its never easy to provide critical feedback.
1.0
Jun 24, 2017

Build.com responses are lip service. 1.5 stars overall.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very creative responses to reviews, unfortunately they are untrue. Build.com, and I'm specifically suspecting HR, are trying to save their good image on glassdoor when the pulse of the company is one of fear and distrust across departments and within them. The hiring process gets you pumped to work there, but after a while reality sets in and you soon realize that you got duped. You are just another cog in the wheel here, and thee is little to no synergy between departments. The fun of parties does not compare to having a well functioning workplace. I would much rather have the latter over the former, but that is not a focus here. It is one of the better paying jobs with benefits in the chico area, but they use that as leverage to keep people who want to stay in chico to work for less than they could make (including the cost of living excuse they use) elsewhere. Which yes, who ever took the position, thats on them. But Build.com could start pulling in better talent with better pay, especially for the positions they view as menial, but are actually the glue that keeps this house of cards from falling apart. $15/hr may sound good to you for certain positions, but adults trying to make a life for themselves cannot do so on such a terrible wage for working a technically skilled position.

Cons

The responses to reviews from Build.com I see here are not honest. The positive reviews here reek of HR writing positive spin reviews on glassdoor. Its been obvious in the past, now they have just gotten better and making their responses more unique instead of obvious copy and pasting of positive reviews. Seeing the responses, and lack of ownership in the real issues at the company, is just another red flag that they have no idea how to lead a company this size. One long standing exec left recently, and the reason they gave was not honest. There is little to no transparency company wide. That fact is fully recognized within the company, including management. But on glassdoor its all harmony and kumbaya. Yeah, Ok, right. While there may be a few people in the company that are actually trying to create real transparency, it is not a goal for executive or director level people, it is not worked into their plan. The bait and switch with comp plans happens almost quarterly for sales. They get you in the door by selling you on the "endless possibilities" to move up. No. That is false. As some one else mentioned in another review, you have to be in the cool club to get noticed, or be over qualified for the sales position you just took with the idea of a track towards something bigger, and nothing happens. Or blow them away by reminding them of the overly energetic CEO, who now lives in Puerto Rico. And our 2nd in command lives in Georgia, works remotely and is in the office every few weeks or so. As another reviewer correctly pointed out, most of the execs, managers and supervisors were (with a few recent exceptions) grandfathered in or appointed by people who do not want their direct subordinates to represent a threat. Everyone is afraid of being replaced at any moment. The fact that every single one of us is easily replaceable has been made abundantly clear. They would rather have turnover than train and support properly . Outside of sales, they promise you an element of control over your work flow, which may happen for a month or 3 while you get settled. But as soon as they get comfortable with you, they pile on the work until you scream. Thats the management style. And to the person that said they will put this kind of stuff on Compini (our internal anonymous feedback forum) because you think thats where it belongs....you do not understand the entire point of glassdoor. The people looking at build.com as a career deserve the truth, not just what the hiring team tells them. And no matter what position you sign up for, you will be forced to stop your work and take customer phone calls when the under-staffed sales center cant handle the load. And with minimum training on how to use those systems since your job could be completely unrelated to customer service or sales. Nice planning! Another red flag that the upper management does not care, or doesn't bother to think, about how the employees feel. No matter what, its dollars over their own people. If you would like to be valued regardless of your department, seek employment elsewhere.

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Build.com Response
8y
Well, there is a lot here to digest. First off, no HR spin here, just me, founder of the company reviewing these. The reviews you see are when we bulk email the company and ask them to leave unbiased reviews. From your pro section ( which are unfortunately mainly cons ) it sounds like you've had a horrible experience here, and for that, I'm sorry. We're in a very competitive space, competing against Home Depot, Lowes, Amazon, Wayfair, and a bevy of other companies. We try and offset the stress associated with the job with perks, parties, and ideally a flexible work environment. It sounds like you've had a bad management experience as well as have a huge disagreement with what the company stands for, our strategic direction, and leadership team. Since we're unlikely to change everything here to accommodate what you're looking for, I'd likely suggest you find a company that aligns more with your values, your ideas on strategy, and the style of leadership you enjoy. As a current employee, your best course of action would likely be to leave. I'm sorry that we didn't better articulate our values, our challenges, and culture in the interview process.
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Glassdoor has 315 Build.com reviews submitted anonymously by Build.com employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Build.com is right for you.