Regret joining Chewy...red flags, stay away

Chewy
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Apr 29, 2021 42 Comments

Here are my top regrets and observations after joining Chewy... What are yours?

1. Didn't do enough research and fell for competitive compensation. It's a bait

2. It's run by a bunch of incompetent Senior executives who have a track record of failure. Do your own DD. I regret missing out on this point. These "managers" throw you under the bus.

3. Chewy eats Amazon and Wayfair sh*t. These folks have never managed a sizable product or service in their life. The good ones from these companies join Chewy and leave in a year or so after realizing. Chewy levels up folks from Wayfair to attract them.

4. They hire for something and you end up doing a very tactical stuff. Primarily because Management thinks tactical and rewards tactical thinkers. They want slaves.

5. Product and a part of IT leadership is filled control freaks, fu**ing lunatics. It affects your day to day life and mental health. You have no freedom as a PM or Sr. Engineer. I was in several meetings where some VP or Sr Director defined architecture even without talking with Sr SDE. PM wanted to do the right thing but VP drove their own agendas. One of the Sr engineer in my team supported PM but was shut up by a non technical Sr Director.

6. It cannot get more political. Not challenging you here Chewy :p. For the size of Chewy, amount of day to day politics is unimaginable. PMs and Engineers live this everyday and then leave. Even for a smallest of features, VPs make such a fuss - every single time.

7. It's a rule of a Queen 👑 (read other posts about nepotism for more context). It's fact. 💯.

8. New CPO is a joke. He doesn't know what he's doing and runs around like a headless chicken. He will speak anything to make you feel good but his actions will be totally different. So, no one takes him seriously anyway. No one trusts him and he's just a mouthpiece of CRO and CEO.

9. Unless you join as a VP or above, you have no influence over roadmap or technical decisions. Leadership thinking is not at all transparent. I doubt they are even thinking. May be they can't or may be they can and this is the best they can do. Regardless, they suck.

10. Original chewy team is leaving and the ones left are waiting for their vesting.

11. Chewy has two axis of performance. Results and behavior. Both are subjective. Even if you hit your goal and show metrics improvement, you may still be marked as someone who doesn't deliver result. Inverse is also true, if you're in good books of people, you are exempt from delivering.

12. Mental harassment by manager is common.

13. I have also heard stories of sexual harassment. Women are not treated well. A few handpicked ones are promoted and picked for PR purpose. You've to be sucking up to CPO and CTO to be picked by them.

14. Autoship numbers are inflated and incorrectly reported. Once investors find out about the dirt underneath, the company valuation will drop and hence stock price.

15. Leadership is rest and vest. No new things or new things from Top down.

16. Chewy thinks of itself as Amazon. They are not even 0.00000001% close to Amazon mindset. They simply copied Amazon LP (leadership principles) but use these LPs randomly. One time our VP used four LPs in one sentence during a townhall. Lol. You'll find it very common that you will be called out in a meeting to Act as Owner for the issue not even in your domain, asked to Deliver Results when Directors Dive Deep, Accelerate Time for low priority issues, and if you speak up in a meeting showing Resilience then you will be asked to Earn Trust of others. If you calrify that the issue is not even remotely related to you, you will be shut up by saying that you need to be Customer Obsessed. You're now confused and Don't Know What To Do (not a written LP).

Honestly guys, it's not worth it. After reading blind or glassdoor if you still join, you deserve it.

Others?

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