Pros
1. Policies that encourage teams to get to know each other. Monthly outings, on site drinks and entertainment is attractive for young professionals 2. Location accessible to trains 3. Commitment to sell a lot of furniture. This company tries many tricks, and sometimes makes the necessary effort to build things out to their conclusion. 4. Work life balance. Rarely does anyone work more than 40 hours in one week. Those who do are not necessarily rewarded. 5. Local engineering team. Offers great benefit from having teams work at the same time together.
Kontras
1. Recruiting is aggressive. Retention is weak. People are treated a commodity. Pawns to be moved whenever and however a small set of decision makers decide. No consideration of smart professionals that come in and leave quickly due to frustration. 2. Internal competition for attention and resources. Teams are set up to “prove” their value through experiments. If numbers are to be believed, this company should increase revenue by several billion this year 3. Whimsical or cutthroat approach to managing priorities and teams. Product Management team is the most inexperienced and poorly structured I’ve seen or read about. Leaders are unqualified. This is in stark contrast to engineering and marketing teams. 4. Internal tools. These are incomplete and underfunded. Management has reasons for not using well established commercial software but it hampers every single employee trying to get things done. Very inefficient and speaks to the arrogance that old timers think Wayfair can do everything better. It can’t. 5. Turnover. Disruptive environment with so many people joining and leaving all the time over the last few years.