Great as a launching pad, horrible as a career
Pros
1) Learning and development opportunities are plentiful. There are courses taught by Wayfair employees on everything from analytics 101 to SQL to how to have a senior presence to how to a seminar on if business school is right for you. The focus here is really on developing the recent grads. I would say 67+% of our company is made up of recent grads. (more on this in the cons section later) 2) Unlimited free snacks. This includes chips, cookies, granola, breakfast bars, etc. We get fruit about 2x a week but it goes quickly. 3) Pod outings. Relatively fun depending on your pod. 4) The people. They are a HUGE pro and one of the biggest reasons why people stay at Wayfair instead of moving on to another company for as long as they do. However, in recent times, because people are starting to leave hordes due to the cons below, this has become less of a reason for people to stay. Some of the smartest, nicest, interesting, and most humble people work at Wayfair. Wayfair, however, doesn't seem to recognize this and does a pitiful job at encouraging their people to stay. Wayfair spends an incredible amount of time and money hiring the best talent but do nothing to retain them. Most of the time, they even push people out (more on this in the con section.) 5) Lateral moves are easy and encouraged. If you have the qualifications, the passion, and the desire, you can easily move to another department. A typical move to another department takes about 2 weeks. People switch between buying, category management, and site merchandising all the time.
Cons
1) The pay is pitiful. It's well below the market rate and makes it nearly impossible to live in Boston with. 2) Bonuses are just as pitiful as the pay. 3) Employees are while cogs in a wheel- replaceable. It's interesting how Wayfair invests so much time to find the right people, interview them, train them, and yet ends up pushing them out and replacing them after about a year and a half. You're pretty much a Wayfair "veteran" after 6 months because you're one of the most senior if not the most senior person on your team. This creates issues for departmental growth. If everybody is new, who can people go to if they have questions, especially about internal tools and systems. There seems to be a lot of lost information between "generations" of Wayfair people. Not a good thing. 4) The culture has become more corporate, not at all like the start-up culture they like to advertise. People judge you if you aren't at your desk by 9am and if you leave your desk randomly. 5) The route to a promotion seems very bureaucratic and not at all transparent. 6) There is a lot of favoritism based on common interests (tv shows, social life, etc.) which leaves a lot of people out and creates a toxic environment of exclusion. 7) Bad mouthing suppliers is really unprofessional and creates an environment of high school-like gossip.
