Wayfair case
Got a case interview for a product manager role at wayfair coming up. Any tips on how to prep or resources you could share?
I hear this place is a dumpster fire.
For sure
Lol. This board is a dumpster fire. Quite a few people here who probably got rejected and failed the case.
Keep hearing "so bad, would eat my own to leave"
I ll come back to the community if I do get to that stage of decision making. Currently trying to crack the product interview and gain some confidence. Could use some help there, if possible
People not helping you is to be expected. It’s a friendly culture on the surface but people like to backstab.
Read Case in Point
I hate it when people here don’t answer the question, and instead talk about their negative experience. Wayfair is great if you’re smart, and like the idea of helping the team evolve from it’s scrappy roots. To answer your question, AFAIK they’re not looking for a specific solution to the case. Rather, they’re looking for the process you would use to get to a solution. If you get far enough laying out the plan, circle back and start outlining assumptions and solutions. Hope this helps.
Consider if you want to be a PM at a place that is so technically backwards wrappers and micro services are basically forbidden by the chief architect and the CTO hasn’t written a line of code in his life...
Neither of those things are true. Don’t know about what wrappers you’re talking about, but there are plenty of microservices being developed by large teams (Atcie, merch, sales and service, Waterhouse). We don’t have a chief architect, he’s on parties writing a book, out in a few weeks. Who gives a shot about a public company’s CTO code writing history, they’re there for stakeholders and outwardly facing, not for internal needs, it’s simply how the public markets work. Try to switch teams to better ones or find something else, it’s a seller’s market but maybe not for much longer, lock in a good signing bonus to make up for any losses you make take, you’ll be happier
Your first line is bull shit since you went on to agree with my statement about the CTO. So...if this were a debate your point would be rendered invalid. With regards to your second....Well life might be different in store front then, but I was told “that’s now how we do things” repeatedly when asked about micro-services and wrappers.
There is a problem that many engineers seem to have here with Wayfair. In my understanding, this is what is happening: Wayfair was not started as a tech company by a tech people. It was started as a retail company that sells furniture online. It was built for an emerging market niche, with some road to profitability in mind. It doesn't need hyper advanced tech stack. It needs to have a platform with a good ux. Now here are the implications: 1) SWEs are not the critical core team there. It's business first. This results in eng position to be worse than at eg Google 2) To do what Wayfair needs to do, you need a good talent, not a top talent. This results in lower swe compensation. 3) Tech is not the biggest problem there. The main problems are Supply Chain and Customer Analytics. This results in prioritizing other issues over putting everything in micro wrappers or whatever It's an online shop with complex supply chain. It's not a competitor to Azure.
Wow this is one of the most accurate things I've read about wf. You've captured it very well.
I don’t disagree. It’s not how they sell Wayfair, which is frustrating. I’ll admit I was fooled by the recruiter and hiring manager. Since joining I’ve argued we are a marketing company, not tech. Our stock price is largely dependent on revenue growth.
When I interviewed it was all about a UGC ROI and go to market strategy if you put AR/VR in a video game. Nothing hard but they expect very consulting like answers.
Ar/vr in a video game? What does that mean
Yes. Run away.
😀