American expectionalism at its finest
Gut am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Not much.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
Management style, working conditions, pay, how employees are treated, hygiene of the office, that they want to be their own European branch but everything is benchmarked with the US, change management within the company, they pretend to be a start up but actually are not just to justify constant changes and bad salary, employees' concerns are not taken seriously, managers can do as they like and are not sanctioned for wrongdoing, company culture of pretentiousness and dishonesty, hire and fire mentality
Verbesserungsvorschläge
They should definitely look in the senior management where all this bad management style comes from. Also, consider raising the salary because then they would stay longer.
Arbeitsatmosphäre
The office is nicely decorated and is stuffed with beautiful furniture. However, everyone basically sits in one big room, so it's super noisy. No one ever opens the windows, so the air gets really bad during the day. The kitchen has to be cleaned by the employees themselves, so this is how it looks.
The toilets get cleaned everyday by a company but tend to be quite dirty anyway.
Kommunikation
The communication in the company is not transparent and good at all. Changes in tasks are discussed behind closed doors and are only presented to the team when it's a done deal without getting input from the people who have to work with it every day. To your face, everybody acts real nice but behind your back people talk a lot of bad things and are neither transparent nor honest.
Kollegenzusammenhalt
Normally, the contact between colleagues is fine. But the colleagues who got the farthest at Wayfair are the ones with the strongest elbows who do not refrain from bullying and lying about other colleagues. Bullying is actually a strong suit of Wayfair's company culture here in Berlin and an established practice to treat employees.
Work-Life-Balance
As already mentioned, overhours are expected and you get put under so much pressure and are bullied constantly by management, which makes you take the stress home with you. In the end, I almost got depressed from the working conditions there. And this is how a lot of employees think there.
Once a month, you can join a team event which Wayfair pays for but as the working atmosphere is so bad, it is not really fun to hang out with management even though I loved my other team members. But spending time with management in my free time when they act how they did is just odd. Also, they offer a wellness week once every quarter. But this is also oversold as a benefit to the employees and the activities are rather bland and not helpful to get any wellness at this company.
Vorgesetztenverhalten
Management is behaving like they own the people who work in their teams. They pretend to be very chill and open-minded but in the end, they only want to impose their ideas on their team without listening to the team's feedback. Once you share your ideas and do not agree with something management has introduced, they tell you that you can't communicate and would behave defensively. Really good managers are slowly replaced by submissive ones who do what senior management/ management wishes. For example, my manager (who was the best!) got replaced by a new team lead who did not even try to connect with the team and simply imposed new stuff on us while placing herself above everyone. When I started criticizing this behavior and also went to her manager, their next idea was to harass me instead of thinking about their actions. Also, management does not really connect with the everyday work people do which leads to a bad lack of knowledge and they therefore commit to tasks that are actually not doable.
Interessante Aufgaben
The tasks are totally oversold in the interviews and are boring as well as repetitive. Considering that Wayfair only hires people with a university degree, this is not acceptable.
Gleichberechtigung
Equality between genders is fine. Between "normal" employees and management not.
Umgang mit älteren Kollegen
I think there is not a single person over 45 working there which is connected to the lack of skills across the management team.
Arbeitsbedingungen
Overhours are expected but not paid. It is almost impossible to leave a little bit earlier when you have e.g. a doctor's appointment. The pay is subpar and tasks are boring. Water and coffee is free which is a good thing if the water fountain and dish washer wouldn't be broken every week. Holiday is mediocre and everyone who is higher than Level 1 is basically forbidden to take vacation. People come to the office sick all the time because they are afraid to stay home due to all the pressure placed upon them. This is why half of the office is constantly sick. It is also not allowed to leave before 5pm even if you came in early or took a shorter break (a break of 1 hour is mandatory).
The only good thing is that you can listen to music all the time.
Umwelt-/Sozialbewusstsein
They do not recycle and computers are only put to snooze.
Gehalt/Sozialleistungen
The pay is very bad for someone with a university degree. Also, they totally oversell the benefits concerning shares, paid gym fare and the bonus.
Karriere/Weiterbildung
In the beginning, they tell you that you can start a successful career but this is not true. Internal applications for higher positions are hardly ever taken and people from the outside with bad knowledge are hired for management positions. This leads to a severe lack of knowledge in the higher ranks. You can take some internal classes which is quite nice but most of them are redundant. Hardly anyone is promoted to level 2 and the raise is ridiculous.