
Warby Parker built a 1,400-employee company by focusing on team culture - pmp301
https://jilt.com/upsell/warby-parker-culture/
======
Traster
I have so many problems with this article, and of course Warby Parker in
general. First off, it seems they're going to commit the cardinal sin of every
Silicon Valley company - completely ignoring anyone who isn't in the head
office. Balloons on every desk - let's just ignore the vast majority of
employees are sales staff who don't have desks.

The more major problem I have with WP is that their product is entirely
generic and their entire business model is just to sell the same thing
everyone else does but invest in a different style of woke signalling
marketing. Which is exactly what this article is. The whole thing just reads
as a "Isn't it great that we're in the growth phase so we can completely
ignore our costs!". Tell me about when your sales _dropped_ and you kept your
staff motivated and happy - that's what I want to know. I don't want to know
staff like free stuff - I already know that. It's kind of easy to keep
retention rates high when all your staff are so knew that there's no legacy
systems to deal with and they haven't been at your company long enough to grow
out of their jobs.

This article brings literally nothing knew to the table. But to be fair, it's
literally an article on an e-mail marketting website.

~~~
freewilly1040
The product is generic, but the incumbent competition charged exorbitant price
for glasses frames and offered poor customer service.

Charging more reasonable prices is of course very replicable, and the mail
order model has been replicated by other companies.

The characterization of ignoring the sales staff is very at odds with my
experience - the staff at their brick and mortar stores I've been to have been
very helpful and capable.

~~~
013a
I've purchased three pairs of Warby Parker glasses, and a lifetime of
"incumbent" glasses before and after that.

All of WP's glasses I've owned were somewhere on the scale between "garbage"
and "fine as a backup pair". Cheap plastic. Very poor fit. Lenses that easily
scratched. Messed up prescription multiple times (thankfully their CS is
pretty good).

I'm thankful that my insurance allows me to own a "real" pair of glasses,
which would normally cost ~$400, from my optometrist. Because the ~year that I
experimented with WP was without a doubt coupled with the worst glasses I've
ever worn in my life, and I've been wearing glasses since the first grade.
I'll only ever be returning to them _maybe_ for prescription sunglasses, and
even then my optometrist often runs bundles with glasses (on insurance) +
sunglasses for 50% off sticker.

I respect that they're opening the market up for people who aren't lucky
enough to be able to consistently afford better glasses. But I don't believe
this is what we should want as a society; everyone should have access to great
vision, and shouldn't have to resort to rebranded chineese knock-offs just to
live their life to their best potential.

~~~
francisofascii
Why would a quality pair of glasses have to cost $400? You can get a quality
SLR camera for that, which would seem to have way more sophistication that a
pair of glasses. What am I missing?

~~~
1zee
Insurance companies and Luxottica

~~~
pseudolus
Chances are that if you're buying glasses you're probably getting a brand
that's directly owned by Luxottica (LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, Apex by
Sunglass Hut, Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Target Optical, Eyemed vision care
plan, Glasses.com, Ray-Ban, Persol, Oakley, etc). They also manufacture for an
impressive string of luxury brands (Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry,
Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Miu Miu, DKNY, and Tory Burch). [0]. It's an
impressive roll-up of a number of retailers and brands by a not widely known
Italian company.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica)

~~~
pm90
Its a monopoly that abuses its power to extract money from hapless consumers,
most of whom just want a pair of decent eyeglasses to function. I've made a
conscious decision to avoid purchasing from them as much as I can, but do
continue to buy from Ray-Ban. See:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM)

~~~
barry-cotter
33% of the US market is a monopoly?

> The company says that the market is highly competitive, and their frames
> account for ~10% of sales worldwide and ~20% in the United States.[42][41]
> Euromonitor International estimates that Luxottica's market share is 14%
> worldwide, and the second-largest company in the industry, Essilor, has a
> 13% market share. The third-largest player is Johnson & Johnson, with a 3.9%
> market share. As of October 2018, Luxottica and Essilor have merged into a
> single company, EssilorLuxottica, representing almost a billion pairs of
> lenses and frames sold annually.

~~~
ovi256
If you check price segments, the monopoly hypothesis gains support again. They
own all the the higher end, including all the fashion / lifestyle brands.

~~~
barry-cotter
By that logic Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

~~~
pm90
Incorrect. Samsung etc. have phones that compete in the luxury smartphone
segment with Apple. Luxottica has no such alternative (as of now, WP seems
nice but it remains to be seen if they will focus on this market segment in
the future).

~~~
Fins
There certainly are high-end, well-made, good-looking, and bloody expensive
frames out there (i.e. everything WP isn't) that aren't from one of
Luxottica's brands. Off-hand I could think of at least Gold & Wood, ic!
berlin, and Mykita.

WP's story seems to be sprinkling some SV magic dust over decidedly pedestrian
frames, not going after the high-end.

------
astura
Honest non snarky question, why does it take 1,400 employees to sell mail
order glasses, which are essentially a quasi-commodity product? What are all
those employees doing? And since TFA says that balloons are put on the new
hire's desk it implies these are all desk jobs, implying they probably
outsource their manufacturing to factories in China.

I ask because I worked at a company that sold machinery at scale (which is
much more complicated than glasses, which don't require novel engineering). We
did all our physical manufacturing in-house, we had a manufacturing floor on
the other side of the wall from the cubicles. We had somewhere between 250-275
employees to run the entire shop, that's manufacturing, engineering, software
(embedded and application), marketing, IT, sales, logistics... Not sure if we
outsourced our cleaning crew or not.

I wouldn't expect a mail order glasses company to have more than 500
employees.

~~~
whitepoplar
This is going to sound _really_ insensitive, but I've noticed that trendy VC-
backed startups often hire people that they believe are smart, but who often
turn out to be entitled and ineffective, and thus the company needs to hire
more employees than is typical to get the job done.

I think there's also a tendency for people not spending their own money to
chase absolute outcomes rather than Pareto outcomes. e.g. if an 85% solution
costs $n, startups often spend $10n on the 100% solution. My guess is that if
you're a founder spending your own money, you'd pick the 85% solution.

~~~
freehunter
On the other hand, what is a startup if not an experiment? Especially a VC-
backed startup. Hiring non-traditional employees in non-traditional ways
(compared to enterprise companies), playing around with headcount and job
roles in non-traditional ways, and seeking non-traditional ways of doing
business. Many of them fail, but the ones who succeed often change the way
business is done in multiple industries.

Every startup is an experiment in doing business a different way. If they went
with the 85% solution or hired off-the-shelf employees, they'd just be another
small business. There's nothing wrong with being another small business, but
startups are so drastically different that we came up with an entirely
different term to talk about small businesses who do things in wildly non-
traditional ways with the hope that those non-traditional tactics will lead to
unprecedented success. We call them startups.

------
yawaramin
In my experience 360 peer evaluations will be gamed. Employees cosy with each
other but not necessarily in exactly the same team will give each other good
reviews and won't ask for reviews from their direct teammates. They'll pull
out extremely harsh criticisms without warning, and without fully
understanding the person they're reviewing. Btw, this isn't just my personal
experience. Here's a bit from that NYT piece on Amazon again:

> After she had a child, she arranged with her boss to be in the office from 7
> a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day, pick up her baby and often return to her laptop
> later. Her boss assured her things were going well, but her colleagues, who
> did not see how early she arrived, sent him negative feedback accusing her
> of leaving too soon. ... “I can’t stand here and defend you if your peers
> are saying you’re not doing your work,” she says he told her. She left the
> company after a little more than a year. ... Ms. Willet’s co-workers strafed
> her through the Anytime Feedback Tool, the widget in the company directory
> that allows employees to send praise or criticism about colleagues to
> management.

( [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-
amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-
wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html) )

~~~
ethiclub
It appears the manager did not comprehensively 'arrange' this for the
employee. Part of this job would have been ensuring that this information was
transparent, and the decision fair.

If employees are complaining, it is presumably a mix of a) company culture
issues and b) a lack of information that meant they perceived it as unfair.

~~~
yawaramin
c) they've been given an easy outlet to complain without taking the time to
understand what's going on. Complaint as gamification. d) other.

------
mediocrejoker
I hate to sound cynical but I am very skeptical of the chart that claims
employees place a higher importance on "Culture and Values" compared to
any/all of "Senior Leadership, Career Opportunities, Business Outlook, Work-
life Balance" or that they value "Compensation and Benefits" least of all

~~~
maxxxxx
I noticed that too. This seems more like how Senior Management wants things to
be. Culture doesn't cost money.

------
yowlingcat
Pretty surprised this hasn't been flagged already. It's clearly content
marketing that doesn't have anything of substance.

As for Warby Parker, it is not a particularly innovative technology company,
which is neither a good thing or bad thing on its own. I will give it credit
for being a solvent business with a working business model. I interviewed for
a pretty high level position there and was pretty unimpressed. I got the
impression of a company that has an undifferentiated product, more funding
(and likely dilution) than they should, fairly slick marketing, a healthy dose
of startup kool-aid combined with altogether pretty ordinary people who were
really sure they were doing something more technologically sophisticated than
running a DNVB.

Given how late stage they were, I was surprised by their offer being as
mediocre as it was, and I took a competing one. No regrets.

------
pseudolus
The podcast "How I Built This" featured an episode with Dave Gilboa & Neil
Blumenthal the founders of Warby Parker. It's an interesting background into
why they chose the eyeglass market and some of their initial problems. The
podcast can be found at:

[https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/586048422/warby-parker-
dave-g...](https://www.npr.org/2018/03/26/586048422/warby-parker-dave-gilboa-
neil-blumenthal)

------
schnevets
The article has definitely been fluffed up by marketing, but if you read it
with a critical perspective, there is a valuable message: _The company network
is a cheaper retention strategy than career /salary growth_

People are less likely to career-hop to the next $10k boost that a headhunter
sends them if they like their employees and feel like their time is well-
spent.

------
cheriot
The 60 minutes episode on Luxottica and why glasses are so expensive was
interesting context for reading about Warby Parker.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDdq2rIqAlM)

------
chiefalchemist
A lot of things are important, but in terms of sustainability and longevity
onboarding has to be in the Top 3. Whether it's new employess or new
customers, establishing the foundation for the ongoing relationship is
essential. It's not something that should be assumed, left to chance, etc.
Else, the odds of having to back fill that hole - and probably failing to do
so - at some future date is going to be very expensive.

------
rland
I had a pair of WP frames that were just fine (my first pair of glasses). When
they broke, I ordered not one, but two pairs of similar acetate frames for $20
from Zenni. Quality was identical, so much so that I wonder if they came from
the factory. A pair from one company cost 10 times the other, and they both
came quickly in the mail... I don't anticipate that this will be sustainable.

The Takeaways section is pretty funny. It reads like an rote instruction
manual for an extraterrestrial middle manager who has never socialized with
human beings before. Straight out of Office Space.

------
wj
Unsuccessfully tried to order my third pair of Sibley's last week but they
were discontinued. :( Got the Wilkie instead but just not the same. Too large
and a white line I didn't notice online. Still ordering through them is a
great experience.

------
cityzen
PSA - If you have a Costco membership, try getting your glasses there. Great
prices, pretty decent selection, will fix and tune your glasses free for life.

------
pl0x
Zenni Optical eats Warby for lunch. They are over hyped and over priced.

------
physcab
[deleted]

~~~
singhrac
This is another market entirely. A lot of those 1400 employees are retail,
which can't be auto-scaled away as easily.

I mean, if they can make meaningful jobs that pay ok without shady business
practices or bad work conditions, more power to them. I'm all for leveraging
people more effectively, but sales and in-person support is a nice job I still
like being done by humans.

------
leowoo91
IMHO, as long as founders are engaged, employees will be happy.

~~~
agency
What makes you think that?

~~~
leowoo91
Past experience, leaving companies because founders are not showing up for
months etc. Besides, article also mentions compensation is not the first
reason to stay in a company? I believe everything else needs an involvement
from top to the bottom, that is what I wanted to point out.

