Rivian

I love what this company stands for. It's very inspiring, and the product is fun and exciting. It's very rewarding seeing the vehicles I contribute to out on the road. When people see the Rivian, many are curious and walk up and ask questions.

The benefits are okay, not particularly great. I think the compensation is good and keeps up with most of the competition.

The culture seems to be changing relatively quickly, and for the worse. Just look at the downward trend of the company's Glassdoor ratings over the past year – a straight line sloped downward.

Management has shifted around, and it is just perpetually hectic and stressful because we are understaffed and simultaneously handling multiple generations of products with just one team. Upper management often comes up with optimistic (often unrealistic), aggressive schedules that exhaust the teams. It's quite stressful; hardly any appreciation has been expressed by my manager or manager's manager. They give us tasks and micromanage, but they put no energy towards keeping us a cohesive team. There is little to no communication to let us know what the higher-level view is, or what direction we're heading in. They're basically saying, "Just do what you're told, we'll make the important decisions, we don't need your input."

There are two sides to the culture: the mission and the operations, and they do not match each other. The mission looks to a bright, inspiring future, but how things operate and how things are managed is dysfunctional and stressful.

I think managers need more emotional intelligence training. They need better awareness of how stressed many of the teams are, and how they make it even worse.

Some managers are just simple-minded taskmasters. They need training on how to support team morale, how to encourage, and how to work with employees to get better performance, not just spit out a to-do list, give criticisms, and motivate through negative feedback like some outdated, dysfunctional leadership concept.

They seem completely unaware or unconcerned about the mental state of the team. It seems like RJ operates with this emotional awareness, but many of the managers do not.

When I started some years back, I was so excited and really enjoyed the interactions with my old manager, happy to see my coworkers, and excited and proud about the mission and the product.

I am still happy to see coworkers and proud of the product and the mission. But every day I dread any meeting my micromanager is in (especially our 1-on-1s where I am just waiting to hear dissatisfaction).

The stress of the hectic pace, along with the criticism and lack of appreciation after so many hours and weekends in the office, is making me count down my days until I can find another opportunity.