Summary
For a rapidly-growing company like Wayfair, scaling in all functions and optimizing at both micro and macro levels, a constant state of change is normal. Wayfair’s hiring landscape has exploded in the past two years with new offices in CA, Austin, Toronto and Berlin, requiring new ways of working, across disciplines, timezone and borders to be effective. In order to ensure connections and best practices across disciplines (product design, user research, content strategy) and end-user teams, strategic ways of working must be put in place to successfully serve our customers, and each other. We not only instituted ceremonies and best practices that have proven to successfully accelerate shared learnings in the last 2 years, we continually optimize those practices, as changes inevitably present themselves. In this talk, we’ll take a closer look at the practices in Wayfair’s Supplier space (also known as Partners), which has 50+ team members.
Key Insights
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Remote work during the pandemic made traditional in-office collaboration rituals ineffective and caused connection challenges for large distributed teams.
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Wayfair’s design team spans three disciplines and six tech centers across two continents, requiring intentional inclusivity across 27 spoken languages and multiple time zones.
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Collectives, or communities of practice, enable individuals with shared interests (e.g., accessibility, Figma) to deepen skills and support each other.
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Formal growth programs, like the 9-week UI growth and 12-week Research Empowerment programs, provide structured, cohort-based learning experiences led by peers.
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Informal coffee chats, facilitated by a bot, recreate casual office interactions and foster cross-team and cross-geography bonds.
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Biweekly show and tells encourage sharing work-in-progress to build alignment and practice presentation skills without the pressure of critiques.
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Smaller weekly design review sessions (XD collabs) offer deep, iterative feedback and help form trusted peer networks.
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Global all-hands meetings and mentorship programs promote community, celebrate milestones, and enable career mobility within the company.
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A feedback culture embracing vulnerability and safe spaces allows designers to share challenges early and iteratively improve solutions.
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Addressing distribution and time zone challenges intentionally—including avoiding screen fatigue—is critical for inclusion and sustained engagement.
Notable Quotes
"I love experiences. I love designing them and I love experiencing them."
"One day we were in the office, the next day we were remote, trying to figure out what our home setups are."
"We weren’t stranded on an island operating by ourselves, but it felt like there were no bridges to connect us."
"Sharing is really central to our process — sharing unbaked pots, not finished wireframes."
"The Wayfair XD leaders have really built a safe space to show up with vulnerability and embrace uncertainty."
"Coffee chats have no agenda, and I’ve had some really wonderful ones that opened my mind to new ideas and communities."
"At Wayfair, we believe we win together — when some of us win, but more importantly, when all of us win."
"We’re constantly tweaking and iterating. We’re not afraid to scrap things if they don’t serve our goals or add to the screen fatigue."
"Design reviews are smaller, weekly meetings where you get deeper feedback and build empathy by solving different but related problems."
"Before, it was a very heavy headquarters-led culture centered on Boston. That had to change to support multiple new tech centers."
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