Wayfair's main selling points are free snacks, kegs in the office, casual dress code (jeans every day, shorts allowed, flip flops allowed, etc.), the open floor seating plan, pod outings, and the quarterly "meetings" (parties). If Wayfair is seriously looking to be a power player in the tech business scene, then Wayfair needs to grow up. These perks do not attract people looking to work in a professional, competitive, but also fun, environment. It attracts people who want to work in a college atmosphere pervaded by drinking (all the time) and a general lack of professionalism that is an HR nightmare-- if they choose to acknowledge issues, which they rarely do unless they are too serious to ignore.
Pay your employees more. I was at Wayfair for nearly 4 years and was paid significantly below acceptable market value. At about 1.5 years in, I was a strong contributor, owned my workflow, and essentially managed myself, since my manager had unlimited vacation time that he took full advantage of. Despite all of this, I was paid $15k below what I should have been. I finalyl swallowed my pride and asked for a raise, backed up by market value figures, about 6 months before I left the company. My request for a raise was turned down, but I was still given more responsibilities, including a direct report, which I was not trained for. I felt as though I was taken advantage of.
Plenty of things that go on at Wayfair seem normal until you leave and work at a company run by experienced professionals. The ticketing system, constant outages of internal tools, weekly changes in priorities/projects, heavy hiring followed by months of layoffs, and unhappy employees are just a few things that I though were normal until I left.
When I worked at Wayfair, a near constant topic of conversation with close coworkers/friends was to complain about work, to talk about job hunting, to talk about wanting to leave. It was almost a given that everyone was, to some degree, unhappy enough to think about leaving at any given time. This isn't normal! I loved my time at Wayfair, but the best decision I have made in my professional life was to leave. I now work at a company where I feel valued, where, yes, I have to dress business-casual, where there are no free snacks, but where I am paid fairly, my professional development is taken seriously, and where I am surrounded by people who LOVE where we work.
