Upper Management not connected to workforce - Anonymous employee Guitar Center Employee Review

3.0
Jul 15, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people are great. I always enjoyed coming into the building everyday. The gear perks were nice even if you weren't a musician. Casual but business appropriate attire. You could wear T-shirts, but not with a print on it unless it had a music theme. Decent pay. A few decent meeting spaces.

Cons

The corporate office. Every floor creaks like you're going to fall through. Most of the office furniture is 20+ years old. Cubes are ok, but too many silos between departments. Horrible vacation policies when you start, no matching 401k, ok health benefits. Massive cost cuttings across the board is a pro and con. Lots of waste that needs to be cut in order to remain cash positive. No personal development training.

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5.0
Jan 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Got to work with so many people

Cons

Long hours during holidays were rough

1.0
Apr 21, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Plenty of capable individual contributors doing real work. - The brand and the business itself are legitimate — the problems are organizational.

Cons

- Senior leadership is politically driven rather than outcome-driven. Strategic initiatives stall out, and leaders spend more energy assigning or shifting blame than actually diagnosing and fixing problems. - Some parts of the org operate on deference to the top. Honest assessments get softened into whatever narrative leadership wants to hear, which makes real cross-functional work difficult. - Senior leaders do not consistently advocate for their own teams. When things get political, self-preservation takes precedence over backing the people underneath, and capable managers end up exposed.

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