Pros
- To say it is the people is an understatement. The individual contributors and immediate manager teams are some of the most outgoing, dedicated, and helpful coworkers that I have ever worked with. - If you love the outdoors, the prodeals are great. - Its less than it used to be, but there are great community service partners that you get connected with that create great civic partnerships.
Cons
-There are two REI cultures. The one at the retail stores where there is a high level of engagement and complete service to the customer. Then there is HQ. The leadership at HQ is as hierarchical and self-absorbed as you will find; where leaders say the PC thing and then do things behind others backs to delay or sabotage those they fear. -Leaders get paid very well with little accountability, and there are no other businesses in the market today that offer them this kind of place to hide. -For 4 years straight, employee surveys say leaderships inability to make decisions is holding the co-op back. So, when layoffs happened, few leaders got let go and they axed a large number of people actually doing the work. It now makes it harder on all of us to get the work done.
