This company's HR and management is an absolute joke - Developer iHerb Employee Review

1.0
Mar 31, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Mad props to iHerb for this one- My biggest pro is that I now have a good company to use as an example of horrible things to do.

Cons

First thing I noticed is that the last 3 or 4 reviews are obviously shill reviews by current employees posted as damage control to the disgruntled reviews before them. I think it's insulting that they are trying to cover up the truth, but who am I to say? Who am I even? To iHerb? To iHerb, I am just a code churning monkey who should be severely underpaid. The saddest thing, though, is that I know I still get paid more than other senior developers. At least 15k more. I'm not bragging here, no, no. There's nothing to brag about the below-industry standard rate I received to be an Irvine Developer. I am pointing out how asinine their pay rates are and how they won't blink an eye to take advantage of their most valuable and senior employees. But you know what? Money isn't the biggest issue. It's actually far down the list of lists I'd make to warn up-and-coming developers from making a huge mistake. But you know what is high up there? The complete incompentance of management. And I'm just going to talk about Irvine's Tech department. There's no time in the world to go into how they have one of the most hated HR departments in California- hated and talked about even among all local technical recruiters, who told me their grievances dealing with iHerb HR. So what's up with this management? Well, if you go read the reviews, you'd find enough to write an essay about how they are a close-nit introverted Persian super-team who make you feel aliented because you aren't one of them. So there's no point in me going into that here. Or what about the latest critical review talking about how dated and completely unorganized their codebase is, and how management just tries to throw a bandaid over it for the next developer they churn out to handle. Why go into that either? How about lets just focus on "churning". What is churning to me? Churning is when they hold you ransom to learn their awful code, and then find solutions to make it as least horrible as possible. But never rewarding you for it. Never rewarding you for all the minefields you had to navigate to make their software more valuable. And so what do you do? You quit. You find a job that actually appreciates you. You, just like the 4 people before you. iHerb's churn rate is applaudable. They seem to find a new developer to burn and replace every 6 months (coinciding with their 6 month contract mark). Anyway, you can see I spent a lot of time reading their reviews. I only wish I spent that time, though, before I accepted the offer. Now I can only look back, reading these reviews, and write my own hoping I could save some poor souls from wasting 6 months of their life.

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iHerb Response
10y
iHerb is one of the few e-commerce companies in Irvine boasting a strong work-life balance as well as generous benefits to our team members. Most work days are standard 8 hours in duration with occasional “pushes” before a publish or special project. We support employees’ desires to enjoy outside interests, family and community passions. Our health and welfare benefits are among the best in our sector along with a great 401(k) match, profit sharing, employee discounts and on-site perks. We do not believe in high turnover; it’s not good for employees or our team. Our recruitment and interview practices have become more stringent as we work to find the top talent with the best “team fit” to join our team. This rigorous process supports our continued growth while ensuring that our new team members will be successful in the long run. The great majority of our new team members are direct hires; very few join us on a contract basis. While we are not able to comment specifically to compensation we are happy to report that our compensation practices and model are very consistent and generous. We review market data on a regular basis and generally bring top talent in at higher-than-average rates. Along with our market review, we review internal practices to ensure internal equity. We have experienced architectural changes with code requiring some clean up. Again, this is nothing unique to iHerb. We have specialized teams reviewing and making great strides to ensure that our code is maintainable and scalable while supporting the best customer and operational experience possible.

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