Thread regarding Wayfair Inc. layoffs

I genuinely give it 6 months before Wayfair is outsourced 100% to India. Based on the upper management that pretends to care about people, but only cares about Money, that's what will happen

Great point when you see how they did nothing but act like toxic power junkies. Those poor coaches …my gosh they kept everything going and now treated like dirt

Sanjeev is the reason all this happened. Ever since he was brought on board Wayfair has gone downhill. He is all about the money and doesn't care about the Wayfair culture.

Hi everyone,

As you know, we’ve been making cost reductions across the organization to right-size our business and become more agile. We’ve made good progress, but today I need to share some difficult news. We will be reducing our team and saying goodbye to approximately 1,750 of our dedicated colleagues as we make some important changes to reshape our business for the future. We wish we could have shared this sooner, in light of the speculation these past few weeks, which I know has been hard.

Our colleagues in Europe have already begun to have conversations. In North America, all employees will receive an email shortly that will let you know if your role is impacted. All impacted employees will be part of conversations today to talk about next steps.

I’ll lay out more on what’s changing in a moment, but first I want to share how we’re supporting our people through this transition.
We are offering severance based on each individual’s circumstances. It will vary by country, tenure and level and follow local regulations. To give an example, in the U.S., employees will receive a minimum of ten weeks pay from today, as well as have continued benefit coverage and vesting of existing equity through March 2023.
We will also be providing other benefits and resources, including access to employee assistance program resources and opt-in Wayfair Alumni networking support.
Impacted employees will receive individualized follow-up with more detail.

To those who will be departing Wayfair, I want to thank you for your contributions to the company and for the impact you’ve had on your colleagues. As co-founders, Steve and I have had an opportunity to work with many wonderful people over the years, and this group stands out for its depth of talent and experience, and we’re deeply saddened these changes will take us in different directions. We’re grateful for what you’ve done and you can be so proud of your accomplishments.

Focusing our energy

This is our second organizational reduction in less than six months and you rightfully have questions. Let me start with the changes we’re making and why. As a company, we need to simplify how we work - we want more of our energy to be focused on delivering against our priorities. Being focused and lean has been the bulk of our 20 year history. Our customer service department started as me and Steve taking shifts on his house phone – we thrive when we are scrappy and dedicated to customer outcomes. Unfortunately, along the way, we over complicated things, lost sight of some of our fundamentals and simply grew too big. There are a few ways to see this. On a financial basis, you can see how our operating expenses - roughly half of which are our corporate headcount - have grown relative to revenue. For most of our history, they have been about 10-11% relative to revenue, but this past year they climbed above 17%. On an operating basis, we can see and feel that we’re not as agile as we used to be or need to be. I’ve decided that we need to fix this, although I recognize how painful these steps will be for people we care about.

The changes today are largely about reducing management layers, right-sizing in certain places, and reorganizing to be more efficient. We want to reduce time spent in meetings and allow teams to own their remit. So we’re ensuring single owners in areas like marketing/creative, curated merchandising and supplier communication. We’re continuing to globalize functions like Supply Chain and Service and reducing the redundancies we find as we do. We’re adjusting the ratios of leaders to team members in areas like Talent and Technology and adjusting the Talent team to match the size of our organization. These changes will allow us to make decisions faster and allow those teams to focus on delivering the top priorities.

Streamlining for growth

You’re also asking what’s next for the business, and, to that end, I want to share a little more about the financial plan. First, it’s important to note that we are seeing nice green shoots in the business. Our core offering across the dimensions of availability, speed and price has improved and customers are responding. We have seen encouraging momentum in orders in Q4, and we are continuing to gain market share.

It is good to see the business strengthening, but that doesn’t change that we can and must be leaner. Overall, we are actioning against over $1.4 billion in costs. And, to be clear – the parts of that plan that impact our team members will be addressed through this announcement. We have also worked hard to find other savings, including refining our advertising costs and negotiating great outcomes for things like insurance policies, janitorial services, and software licenses. The bulk of what’s left is in other third party negotiations, and then in various operational cost savings areas, and these workstreams are well underway, with the savings expected to come throughout 2023. As a result of all of these efforts, we expect to return to adjusted EBITDA profitability earlier in 2023.

These changes streamline our business and enable us to drive even sharper retail pricing and assist growth. Importantly, we do not believe these changes reduce our addressable market or long-term opportunity, and we are continuing to invest in the future. We are not sacrificing tomorrow while we refocus today.

I know it can be hard to imagine how we can operate our large, complex business with a smaller team than we had yesterday. I expect that it will take a bit of time to see that in fact we will be more agile and get more done. While I believe that is true, I also think we need a good number of people in order to tackle the opportunity ahead, which is why I believe we now have the right size team for the next phase of our journey, and I think we have a very bright future.

For those who are leaving us, Steve and I again want to say thank you for being a part of Wayfair. We sincerely appreciate what you’ve done for the company and each other. For those who are staying, we know this is difficult for you as well, and we will come together this afternoon to talk more about all of this. You’ll receive an invite later today.

Thank you for everything you do to serve our customers and suppliers. And most of all, thank you for what you do to support one another.

Niraj

Here is what Sanjeev had to say:

Dear Service colleagues,

Teams across the organization are digesting the news that we will be reducing the size of our workforce. Given time zone considerations, our colleagues in the EU were informed earlier this morning (EST). Today is a tough day, and I want to share a heartfelt thank you to those friends and colleagues leaving today, who have contributed so much to Wayfair’s success.

As it relates to our organization specifically, there are two primary changes I want to share: 1) globalization update and 2) site closures.

Effective immediately, Customer Service Leaders will assume global scope and responsibilities across the 4 Standards pillars in Service:

Global Execute Standards: Frontline & Dedicated Service (F&DS) will be led by Shantanu Das, Director F&DS.
Paul Simpson, Director EU Execute Standards, will continue to lead our EU Execute Frontline teams, and will represent Service in discussions with EU cross-functional leaders. Paul will report to Shantanu.
Global Execute Standards: Specialized Service will be led by Joe Wilson, Director Specialized Service.
All NA and EU Specialized teams, including Scam Prevention, will report to Joe. This will include the Advanced Resolutions team in NA which will move from Shantanu to Joe’s org.
Global Forecast Standards will be led by Sunpreet Singh, Director Forecast and Create Standards.
John Sullivan, Assoc. Director EU Forecast Standards will lead Global Real Time Operations. John will report to Sunpreet.
Global Create Standards will be led by Tamara McGough, Director Create Standards. Tamara will become the primary point of contact for all product, engineering and data science leaders in NA & EU. Tamara will report to Sunpreet.
Global Embed Standards will be led by Miranda Conlon, Director Embed Standards.
Bridie De Loughry, Assoc. Director EU Embed Standards will lead our Global Service Engagement and Leadership Effectiveness strategy. Bridie will report to Miranda.

The decision has also been made to virtualize four of our North America Service facilities in Bryan, Layton, Pittsfield, and Springfield. The majority of these location employees will be moving to full time virtual work arrangements. Additional information is being provided to all impacted location employees directly. The Athens facility will continue to serve as our sole physical site in NA and our Global training center of excellence.

I’m proud of the work we’ve done in Service to improve the customer experience; including quality enhancements, improved process efficiencies, scam prevention and even introducing a new mobile chat vehicle. This winning team has been recognized by JD Power Best in Class and Call Miner Innovator of the Year. In many ways, the strength of our team makes today’s news harder to digest, as well as bringing hope for the future. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues, but we know our team has what it takes to rise above this current challenge.

I acknowledge that this is a lot of information to absorb at one time. All teams will be meeting with their leader in the following days to discuss the above changes, and direct impacts.

Regards

Sanjeev S Sahni
VP, Operations
Pronouns: He/Him/His

Wayfair is all smoke and mirrors. They are hiding behind a bunch of excuses. They were handed the opportunity of a lifetime during the pandemic with new customer adds. The arrogance I heard when employees asked what are we doing to retain said it all. No plan. This is a poorly managed business run by a bunch of unethical consultants. Employees are expendable because they are all busy cashing in. The party will be over its a matter of time. Sad for those who lost their jobs today because of a neglectful leadership team. Thomas and Niraj are disgraceful humans.

Especially infuriating considering they are trying to brush this off under the tech industry and economic climate rug, when in reality it responds to their incredibly poor analytical skills, lack of common sense in the decision making process, irresponsible strategy, and having given key roles to people unfit for those.

I remember Niraj saying he was taking responsibility for the wave of lay-offs in August, and I would like to understand how exactly has he done that? Because what I see is him and others equally guilty still having a high paying job, whilst actually qualified employees from different levels have lost theirs as a result of Senior Leadership actions and capability gaps. Saying you take responsibility is not the same as taking responsibility. Funny considering that one of Wayfair’s principles is Be an Owner. Well, I don’t see ownership in any of them!

If they wanted to remove unnecessary layers, which has been the excuse given, maybe the ones being fired should have been the big shots who are driving the company to bankruptcy, instead of the people actually contributing.

To my colleagues who have also been forced to pay the consequences of clowns being in power: best of luck and don’t let this doubt your worth. To my colleagues who remain there: don’t walk, run to find another job, this wave won’t be the last.