Needs restructuring at the store management level - Geek Squad, Autotech Best Buy Employee Review

2.0
26 May 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Depending on the market and store, the pay may be pretty good. Best Buy offers a decent level of job security, and the benefits are overall pretty good. They do offer full Health benefits, stock purchase plans, and a very good 401k program. They all offer Tuition Reimbursement, however they require you to work 32 hours a week to be eligible for this - more on that in the negative area. They get some great special offers for employees, like discounts with Cingular, and Comcast, and discounts on new GM cars, they used to have Ford and Honda, but they dropped them unfortunately. A few times per year they will have cookouts for employees. Compared to a store, the corporate level is like Heaven on Earth.

Cons

Each store is completely different. GMs and other Managers can influence a store drastically, and many times they will give promotions based on favoritism(or in some cases if you have an affair with your GM he will get you made a supervisor at a nearby store - and yes, this did happen at my store). Unfortunately, if you have to move you will likely have little luck with transferring. In my case, the store near where I moved to wanted to reduce my pay by $4 because "that's what they paid their people here", and they could only get me under 10 hours a week. Best Buy claims to care about its employees, but not enough to keep them within the company. Perhaps at higher management/corporate levels they are more willing to try to retain employees, but at the store level, they simply don't care. Often times managers will be moved around often, and will have little or no idea about their areas or how to run them. So getting things done is difficult. I know Best Buy has policies for handling things, but many times the store management will not know these policies, deny these policies exist, or claim the policies are being misinterpreted or do not apply. As a result, most of your co-workers will not care at all. In fact, the easiest way to survive at Best Buy is to avoid contact with people as much as possible. If a manager is in the area then you should spend time with one customer as long as possible, this looks best to management. They also tend to confuse people who are loud and obnoxious in meetings with people who are motivated about their jobs. In my experience those people would sit around and talk sports with each other all day.

Explore other reviews about Best Buy

5.0
8 Sept 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Just what you would expect. Everyone friendly. Nice benefits.

Cons

None at all. Great place to work.

2.0
4 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-It's a job that is available in most locations.

Cons

-The company, on a corporate level, doesn't seem to grasp the value of the talent they have. - Close ties with Citibank subvert the importance of product knowledge, customer service, and revenue for credit card sales. - Daily Performance check-ins are overbearing and myopic. - Tends to burnout motivated employees with false carrots and hollow promises. - Pay's terrible, and rides the line of predatory at times.

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