a race to the bottom in the world of making internet cash
Pros
- Unlimited paid time off (for now) - Young environment, young atmosphere - casual work environment, no dress code - brand new cafeteria with plenty of healthy food options - plenty of bike parking - as much coffee, Vitamin Water and tea as you can drink - peers and relatives think your job is "cool", makes for decent small talk
Cons
Although the company has a young vibe and is really exciting at first, the honeymoon period wears off very quickly when you're constantly reminded about the metrics you need to hit and that if you don't you'll be disciplined or terminated. You work long days - 9 hour shifts (and most people work through their lunch). Although the company may look like an office of slackers to someone passing by, you are literally working from the minute you're in until the minute you leave. Management is very hit or miss, some are great, others are absolute nightmares and treat their team like slaves. Wages are going down, and all customer service department salary staff was converted to hourly wage (without notice or dept input). You started at Groupon 2 years ago? You make ~$4k more a year than people starting now. You started a year ago? You make ~$2k more than people make today. Wages are going down and the workload is increasing due to internal and external pressures. Veterans talk about the "old" days (the company is only 4 years old) and how much fun it used to be. The vibe can be a little cliquey with coworkers, in some ways like freshman year at college. Entire customer service team was converted to hourly wages recently, and the department heads said it was so that it'd be easier for folks who want to work part time, but in reality, it's a cost cutting measure. For now, the unlimited paid time off is the only real salvation, but there's a really high chance that this will change. The job on a day to day basis is dealing with the same things. However, the company and department makes big changes every couple of months. There's not a ton of room to move up in the department, so folks have to look at other departments or look for work elsewhere. There's a lot of moving parts in the company, so things go wrong - a lot. When deals go bad, the customer service team has to deal with the fall out. There's a huge disconnect between sales and customer service and often times, it feels impossible to resolve things in a timely manner. For several months, there was an army of temps, all of whom made a lot less than the full time employees, had to do nearly double the workload and were viewed and talked to like second class employees. You're evaluated on a weekly basis, and by performance metrics, however they are not always accurate as there are constantly issues with the system. No pay increase after six month reviews, only after annual reviews and most people aren't getting raises due to the huge issues the company is facing being a public company now.
