r&d engineer

marketing specialist

senior manager

director of marketing

developer

Wella

After a very successful year, the company blindly assumed that things would only get better and made commitments and planned financially for an even bigger year after. Of course the reality was the company couldn't hit a lot of its financial goals for the year and ended up having multiple layoffs. The private equity firm who owns the company is actively looking for a buyer and it's just not a stable work environment. No one openly discusses the layoffs, people just won't be at work and no one will know why and if they do, they do not share. 

The company demanded the entire workforce return to the office last year - it has proved a delusional waste of everyone's time as the wifi is regularly out, access to our own website is often restricted, and much of the office equipment just doesn't work. We are genuinely more capable of working at home rather than relying on an unreliable work environment.

The culture is very cliquey. Half of my team will go to lunch together every day while never inviting the rest of us. Brown nosing is rewarded. Poor work is praised. For example, design work is so elementary and outdated but no one will admit it and instead praise even the most cringiest creations. Certain people on the team are enabled to be incredibly rude to others and refuse to follow simple instructions or requests. It's as if I have to grovel to get an image created by someone who's job is to do just that for me. And if I give any sort of constructive feedback it is dismissed or changes are refused because you shall not burden the "prince" with actually doing his job.

The digital team is insanely heavy on the meeting schedule. The entire team of 15 are required to attend an hour long team meeting EVERY single day. Almost every meeting goes over time and almost every meeting is a huge waste of time with at least half an hour being spent discussing the kitchen updates being made to my manager's house or whatever football game happened over the weekend, etc. Meeting conversations are so irrelevant to any actual work but you have to be on camera and pretend to care if you want to keep your job. "Older" members of the team can say inappropriate things and get away with it. For example, one woman often makes comments about people's appearances and jokes about drugs, etc. It's a very uncomfortable environment. 

The digital team seems to be grasping at straws to try to get people to shop online and ignore the fact that the website itself is still so incredibly outdated and not user friendly - the competition is so far superior and the updates being made to the site are so slow to come and so minor. I have had multiple internal partners tell me how bad the website is and how they are embarrassed to promote it externally. One of the digital team's solution is to do giveaways...giveaways that you can only enter if you make a purchase on the website. Again - the level of strategy and innovation is on the ground floor here.

On top of this, the upper management just does not seem competent - big goals are spewed out on a whim and then quickly forgotten after they've made everyone below them run around in circles first. The rest of the company is generally subpar. I would often hear people make suggestions of something "innovative" that could be done and it was alarming to me. For example, it would have been innovative if it was 2010 but it's 2023 and sending a PR box to an influencer isn't exactly going to blow anyone's mind. 

The way the company is structured, it is incredibly difficult to determine who is responsible for what or who knows what information, etc. Leadership is inaccessible and direction is often not provided, even to new team members and new team structures. It's often clear that people just do things to give the appearance that they're doing something big when really they don't know what they're doing and they hope no one else is noticing.

And then there's HR. They are unbelievably bad at their jobs. They made at least 14 different mistakes that I caught, and that's just what I noticed. They misspelled my name on official documents, they created duplicate email addresses for me, they even stopped my healthcare coverage accidentally!

Overall this company has been a disappointment. I don't expect it to survive much more of the recession and I plan to seek alternative opportunities to avoid going down with the ship.

I found the compensation to be ridiculously low for the job description and the geographical cost of living. I also was subject to verbal abuse from my supervisor, as well as not getting credit for the excellent work that I did for this company. As a result of the constant personal berating that I endured from my direct supervisors, I was ignored then laid off when I went to Human Resources. The Upper Level Management also berated former employee's in company meetings after they had left because the company did not treat them properly. I found that this culture of abuse to be endemic to the whole of the company, and had many employee's discuss their misgivings regarding the company behind closed doors.

Wella has great diversity, flexible work schedule, Christmas week shut down, unlimited sick days. 

Down side is horrible emotional manager who does not know how to separate logic from emotion in the work environment. Team members are afraid of the managers response to any minor or major mistake as the manager is looking to blame and throw someone under the bus to absolve them from their managerial responsibilities. 
Wella doesn’t have SOP for onboarding and managers fully throw people into the job and expect immediate results with no room for error. 
HR is only there to cover for the company/manager. Does not care for employees well being. 

Visiting with Salon owners and creating strong reliable relationships. Increase sales, open new account. Seeing the result of the hairdressers being involved and excited to learn new color techniques. Either being in salons for private color classes with the staff or being on stage in front of hundreds of stylist at hair shows. Knowing that they want me there to teach them and show them how to expand their talent and help them build a stronger clientele.

Poor management with unrealistic goals and high expectations. Diversity and inclusion are nonexistent and it is just exist in new paper.  Most of the time, after decisions are finalized plans will change mid project. No work/life balance. Will spend most of the workday in meaningless meetings listening to colleagues who just loves the sound of their own voice. CEO is not strategic and she does not understand beauty.  She keep changing the direction and her messages are not clear or authentic. I will not Recommend this company to anyone else. 

Poor management with unrealistic high expectations. Diversity and inclusion are nonexistent and team members can be very cliquey and hostile towards those who don’t present like the majority. Too many cooks in the kitchen so it take forever to finalize decisions. 90% of the time, after decisions are finalized  plans will change mid project. No work/life balance. Will spend most of the workday in meaningless meetings listening to colleagues who just loves the sound of their own voice. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Family atmosphere so much education


What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Travel and auditions and change of ownership often 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Family and supportive with lots of inspiration 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Fun exciting and creative with lots of learning

Being able to create and design all the promotional material for our promotions was so inspirational for me. The end result was always the best result. From setting up photography product shots to scanning and creating exciting presentations for Corporate Events always kept me busy.

Pros: Very interesting and concrete projects in CRM and e-commerce, with real responsibilities and exposure to international teams. I worked on meaningful campaigns and learned a lot about data, customer journeys, and digital tools. Work-life balance was generally good, with flexible hours and telework, which made it possible to manage studies and personal life. Team was supportive and trusted juniors, making the experience both enriching and manageable.

Working with the stylists and managers at Wella was inspirational and educational. They hold a very high standard to maintaining a professional image and expect nothing but driven, ambitious and organized personalities. Their education and training sets an educator up for success.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
R&d engineer 2 salaries reported	$116,000 per year
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Director of marketing 1 salary reported	$187,500 per year
Developer 1 salary reported	$75,000 per year

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