Working at West Marine in Watsonville, CA: 4 Employee Job Reviews by Real Employee working in Watsonville, CA Area

"I worked at West Marine since 2005. Great company to work for. Family oriented and associates and customers always come first. Allow associates to grow and develop their skills and move forward ."

"Great"

What do you like about working at West Marine?

"the ability to take care of customer in the way that worked best for the customer."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"know about boats and the porducts needed on boats before the interview."

What don't you like about working at West Marine?

"There was nothing I did not like about working for the company."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"No visits on the known busy sales days, with out advanced notice."

"I love my job and my team at West Marine, but salaries area are not competitive."

What do you like about working at West Marine?

"I love my job and my team. Boating is a fun industry."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"This is a pretty good place to work for in Santa Cruz county."

What don't you like about working at West Marine?

"Salaries are too low, and there is not enough server support."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Please raise salaries and improve server speeds and add more IT people."

What do you like about working at West Marine?

"Corporate offices located near Santa Cruz, CA and there is the opportunity to use the company sail boat if you like. The Store environment is very positive and energetic.There are a couple of newer Board Members with legitimate Retail backgrounds (not just sailing buddies) so they are pushing for more out of the CEO and Exec team which is great... they should push harder."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Play up your boating experience and background. You should be OK working in an environment where you have very little control over your business as management micro manages. Change agents need not apply as you will be very frustrated with the lack of support."

What don't you like about working at West Marine?

"No pay for performance, mediocre benefits. Decision by committee culture results in low creativity and no accountability for individuals. Annual bonus are redesigned each year to pay out less and less and there is no personal component to the calculation. The executive team is too heavily focused on politics between their silos. Secure job but most of the A-players inevitably leave as they are continually blocked from making real strides forward. Culturally, this company is old and stodgy and once hired your position will likely not change for many years, nor will you salary as annual increases barely go above 1-2.5%. The company is showing year over year profits which is great, unfortunately, a large bulk of this is from bonus restructuring and the primary competitor going out of business."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Reward people for performance. Promote people based on skill sets rather than reputation, favored status, or perception. Allow new ideas that are out of the box. Aspire for larger growth over all. Fire non performers w/o regard to their familial connections to Execs. Pay more to attract real performers and then add incentive's for retention."