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Wayfair, which got tax break to hire people, lays off 350 in Boston
By adamg on Thu, 02/13/2020 - 1:54pm
WBUR reports that Back Bay-based Wayfair announced today it's laying off 550 people, including 350 in Massachusetts. In 2018, the state gave the online-focused home-furnishings company a $31 million tax break in exchange for hiring more people in Boston and Pittsfield.
In the current tight Boston labor markets, other companies quickly turned to Twitter to advertise openings, at least for software engineers.
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Comments
WayNotFair
WayNotFair
Maybe they should return
Maybe they should return their $31,000,000 tax break?
Depends
After all of this, are they retaining the number of jobs they agreed to add as part of the tax credit? Also, what are the details of the credit? The devil is in the details.
Thing about hiring engineers from Wayfair...
...Wayfair has a reputation for hiring any engineer with a pulse. Not saying all Wayfair engineers are bad, just that if you're considering hiring ex-Wayfair devs, caveat emptor.
And paying them way above
And paying them way above market value. We've interviewed former way fair employees in the past who's salary expectations were so out whack with thier level and ability. I've told people who've been poached by them, take the money and enjoy it while it lasts but don't be too proud to take a lower paying job after they have layoffs. You could see this coming a mile away. When a company is willing to pay way over market value they don't expect to keep you around very long.
Blah...
It's a poorly managed business, that's why!
Paging Charlie Baker
Gonna make them give it back?
Silly goose...
Now he's not going to do anything for the MBTA either thanks to your outburst ;)
Not like
he was planning to anyway. /shrug
Coulda been worse. We might have
flushed away $75 million by lending it to some dumber-than-dogshit, trans-phobic, Nazi-loving ex-Sox player.
Anyone who supports tax breaks
for companies based on claims of sustained job creation is falling for a sucker's pitch. Just look at MGM and Encore.
the list goes on
GE, Amazon, all of the biotechs, etc.
Can we get our tax credits back, Wayfair?
Sorry for the developer let go while on vacation today and all the employees on the 55 bus this morning who may have gone to work to find they no longer had a job.
Nah, the best we'll get is
A drying rack for $15.99 or toy boxes/organizers for under $100 on their "on sale page"
Startups 101:
Absolute growth always yields to sustainable growth and profit. And the cost is almost always jobs. Lots of jobs.
Though I guess it’s fair to say Wayfair is hardly a startup anymore.
Being informed helps...
Before all of the business experts chime in telling Wayfair to "return their tax credits?", they should educate themselves on Wayfair first. They are the largest tenant in the entire back bay - with over 1,000,000 SF of office space - and over 5,000 employees there. They aren't going anywhere.
Good, Sound Financial and Managerial Balance (Lol)
I wonder how many employees, current and former, are aware of the 6-building, helicopter-pad-equipped vacation compound Niraj is building Capeside:
25 Gardiner Ln, Osterville, MA 02655
https://goo.gl/maps/SWhDy1Hg3qJRB9GaA
It’s fine to be liquid-cash loaded, but at least be self-aware. Many of the former are not also the latter, unfortunately.
As a former employee
all I can say is Wayfair is a straight up piece of shit employer.
Also worth noting that this is a little over 3%
of their total workforce, albeit with the brunt of the blow falling here.
With empathy to the laid-off — been there, feel that, the memory still stings many years later — this is a commonplace among tech companies, whether established titans (see Cisco, which culls a few percent of its workers based on performance pretty much annually) or skyrocketing startups, even in good times.
Americans are especially vulnerable to this, as we inevitably are among the most expensive workers in a global workforce. The good news is that the local tech market is the strongest it’s been in years, so anyone with decent skills should land fairly quickly. It sounds like a sweatshop, anyway. Chin up, hope you find a kinder workplace soon. It may be hard to imagine now, but my own experience of getting shit-canned after a merger was ultimately positive for my career and happiness. But it sucks brutally in the moment.
Thanks, Obama, for bringing us back from the brink. Thanks, Trump, for not slowing down the Obama Employment Boom too much.
Tax breaks for jobs are a sucker's game
The very clever fellows who work for Charlie Baker negotiating tax breaks for employers should be replaced by a part-time administrative assistant who responds to such solicitations with a postcard saying, "Sorry, we don't do that but we'd love for you to locate here. Thanks, Massachusetts."