Wave Reviews

Wave has been struggling since its acquisition and the founders cashed out and left. It was bought by a traditional retail company that doesn't understand tech and has different values about people. The people they've brought in to run the show have old-school corporate mentalities and don't understand why employees are checked out, are underperforming and don't trust anyone. There is truly bad senior management right up the parent company's CEO. The skilled leaders have either been fired, laid off, or are leaving for greener pastures. Huge levels of burnout. Many people sticking around are just going through the motions, or resort to manipulation and tribalism. Wave is still trying to figure out its product direction or how to be valuable. Decisions are made top-down in a vacuum, with poor integration between product and engineering. Technical debt isn't managed. Engineering teams struggle to deliver new features and are slowed down by poor, overly complex, and unmaintained tooling.

1) The executive team often speaks to us as if we are lazy, incoherent, and whining. It's normal to see passive aggressive messages in our company channels, which isn't professional at all. 2) The P&C team (for the most part) also operates in this manner. They speak and communicate in a very passive aggressive manner especially in the context of conflict resolution. 3) The pay IS NOT anywhere close to market. They will gaslight you with this response every time you inquire about a raise, promotion, comp review, or even how to get there. They will insist they need "time" to look into the market. For context - during my job search leading me to leave Wave, it's become common for Tech companies to show you their marketplace research for salary during the hiring process. Wave consistently has no salary transparency and I'm ashamed to have put faith in them when clearly they are either lying, or misinformed. This has led to an immense amount of turnover, which leaves those remaining at Wave burnt out and stressed as they are operating on minimal resources. 3) Little to no opportunity to grow: The PMs and other managers at Wave are phenomenal in trying to grow their teams and focus on career growth. However, this never translates in a promotion or recognition of skills/abilities within Wave, which ends up pushing people to seek opportunities elsewhere - Regardless of how much extra responsibility you take on, and how much you invest in your education on your own time. This leads to people who are passionate about Wave, to look for opportunities outside of it.