West Marine Employee Reviews for Director of Product Development
Browse West Marine Reviews by Job Title →Director of Product Developments at West Marine give their company a 2.3 out of 5.0, while the average rating for West Marine is 3.5, making them 41% less happy than every other employee at West Marine and 47% less happy than every other Director of Product Development on CareerBliss - the happiest Director of Product Developments work for Red Mango Frozen Yogurt.
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."
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