Sweetwater reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(541 total reviews)
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Mike Clem

89% approve of CEO

74% positive business outlook

Sweetwater has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 541 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Sweetwater employee rating is 21% above average for employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.4 stars).

Reviews by job title

541 reviews
2.0
Nov 26, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Gear Discounts -Insider Information -Good Support from Vendors

Cons

-Long Hours -Little to No Chance of Time off During the Holidays -Email Overload -Excessive And Overbearing Corporate Culture -Extreme Employee Burnout

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Sweetwater Response
4y
Thanks for sharing your feedback here. From your comments, I can sense the challenges you've faced. We're always very up front with our Sales Engineer hires that the expectations (and rewards) from the position are high since we believe in our team delivering the absolute best to our customers. Given the nature of retail/ecommerce, we are up front that this role is not a typical clock-in/clock-out 9 to 5 job. At the same time, we work hard to ensure that our employes are getting an appropriate work life balance. Many of our sales engineers do quite well for themselves and are hitting their goals inside of a total of 45-50 hours/week...certainly more than a basic 40 hour week but we also feel this is reasonable given the opportunity they have to generate significant income for themselves (for many this ends up being over six figures) and the autonomy we provide for Sales Engineers to shape how they approach driving their business . In addition, we've invested quite a bit in helping our employees manage their balance of work and life. In addition to our Employee Assistance Program, we have in-house mental health counselor to offer free and completely confidential counseling support to any employee who wants it. Our Vice President of Employee Wellbeing also leads a number of initiatives to help support our employees. Each of these steps is because we care deeply about our employees - way beyond the numbers. Also, in terms of us being a local company - we remain strongly communicated to our community. Yes, we recently brought in an investment/ownership partner. At the same time our founder (Chuck Surack) remains as a significant owner in the company and serves as our Chairman of the Board. We also continue to be heavily philanthropically active in our community by supporting dozens of nonprofit organizations and school music programs. This is a long time part of our DNA and we have no plans to change it. We'll keep looking for even more ways to support our employees and our community in the months and years to come. In the meantime, if I or anyone else on our HR team can be helpful to you, please do not hesitate to reach out. - Jeff Ostermann, Chief People Officer
3.0
Oct 20, 2021

Good, but draining

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great gear discounts, cool coworkers, good technology to help make the job efficient. All of the sales coaches are great, and Sweetwater University is really helpful. Haven’t had training this good at any other job I’ve been at. Getting to learn about all kinds of gear is great. Tons of free gear.

Cons

You will have no life. Sweetwater does not value your work life balance at all. You will work 3 unpaid early AM meetings, and usually stay later in busy seasons especially if you are new. You’ll work multiple late shifts a week. You have to work weekends frequently, and holidays without any extra pay. It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to request days off unless if it’s MONTHS in advance. If you have kids you want to see or aspirations for doing anything outside of work, this might not be for you. They also are planning on changing the commissions structure drastically, in a way that could have the potential to be a serious pay cut if you don’t pester your customers. But we’ll see

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Sweetwater Response
4y
I'm glad to see your many positive comments about your coworkers, coaches, SWU and gear benefits. Regarding the Cons you mention, we are very clear with all sales engineers that the role is a commission-based opportunity. As such, there will of course be meeting times that are not directly paid (since it's not an hourly position) but are necessary for continued learning about the products and vendors we support. We are pressing into making some improvements to scheduling and, for the past several months, a group of sales engineers has been providing front-line guidance on how best to design and implement a system that could work well for the very complex task of coordinating nearly 600 schedules. Thanks for offering you candid insights here. We're always working to making things better for our team members! - Jeff Ostermann, Chief People Officer
2.0
May 24, 2019

Unorganized

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Easy over all job. Clean, lots of company perks and amenities.

Cons

Pay is terrible and they mislead you on entrance pay in almost every department. When I worked there, they had recently raised the starting wage for new hires while employees that started before you were making a dollar or more less per hour doing the exact same job. You would think after being established for so long, they would have have it better organized, but they do not. Lots of very young people working there, and you will see lots of safety violations happen right before your eyes. How no one has been written up, or the company fined, is beyond me. You'll see all kinds of kids horsing around on equipment including the powered fork lifts. They start you off immediately in the packing line in the worst congested area that requires the most bulk packaging and materials, which eats away at your production numbers. That they bring to your attention DAILY after the first day! Then, they brag to the person next to you for making 145 items packed the day before when they were in the packing line for small items, where 20 things (guitar pics, strings, etc.) could fit into a smaller than a shoe sized box and takes 5 minutes or less. The entire place is a joke. I don't know how they stay in business. My guess is that they have so many investors, that they always keep money incoming and outgoing (stocks, buy/trade/sell, move, reinvest money over here, and pull out current money holdings from over there). Cause they constantly ship single purchase items that the customer paid $20 or less for, with $5-$10 worth of boxing and packing material costs, and the customer doesn't pay shipping either. Thousands of these go out per day. Where they are majorly eating a loss of profit somewhere, they must be getting major gains in another source.

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Sweetwater Response
7y
It's unfortunate that this former employee did not enjoy their time here. We always appreciate feedback on how we can do better, but there are a number of inaccurate statements in this review we feel compelled to address: We did in fact implement a significant pay increase in our Distribution Center in September of 2018 for both new and existing employees, which in our view was a very positive thing. It was certainly viewed as a positive by the overwhelming majority of employees working in that department. We are very transparent with all new hires about what our pay rates are and how any incentives we offer work. Contrary to the reviewer's comments, there was not a scenario where brand new employees made more than someone in the same job on the same shift who had already been an existing employee. We were, in fact, very careful to insure existing employee's pay rates were also adjusted when we raised our starting rates so this would not happen. There are different pay differentials depending on what shift an employee works and whether or not they operate certain machinery, so perhaps that is what the reviewer is referring to. We take safety and the well being of our employees very seriously, so all employees who operate machinery are first trained and certified before being allowed to operate certain equipment. Our safety record is actually quite good. We do track productivity to insure we are providing the great customer service we are famous for, but not as a tool to chastise employees. And we of course know there will be a period of time before a new employee reaches their full productivity potential. Sweetwater is a privately held company, so any statements that we are shuffling assets like stocks (which we don't have) are completely inaccurate. We pride ourselves on exceptional customer service and our mission statement to "Always do the right thing." Our business is growing and thriving, and a big part of that success is centered around the speed at which we fulfill orders and our free shipping policies. Despite the reviewer's concerns about the cost of shipping a package compared to the monetary value of the order, we are both profitable and healthy as a company. For us, it is all about the long term relationship we have with our customers based on trust and integrity, as opposed to any individual scrutiny over the profits of a single order. This notion of our commitment to a long term relationship continues to serve both Sweetwater and its customers well. Jeff McDonald, Senior Vice President of Human Resources.
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Glassdoor has 571 Sweetwater reviews submitted anonymously by Sweetwater employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Sweetwater is right for you.