Great products and brand, terrible work environment - Software Engineer Rivian Employee Review

2.0
5 June 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Great brand - Overall great first products that are just ramping and customers love - There's real upside opportunity if the company can pull through the next few years

Cons

- There is no shared culture at the company. Departments and teams work in radically different styles and struggle to collaborate as a result. Cross-functional teams will ignore messages, emails, meetings, finally get in touch and commit to something then fail to follow through. There is no accountability between teams and it's often lacking within them. - Politics and territory battles are brutal and the only way things get done. Major projects are allowed to fail or are even sabotaged between teams, no one trusts anyone outside of their immediate team. Entire teams will idle while politics play out. - Multiple layers of poor middle management. Many of these managers don't know how to lead teams or drive major projects. The company is missing leaders in key areas who are willing to make major decisions and rally teams around them. This has led to competing and overlapping projects everywhere, feeding politics and inefficiencies, and leaving stakeholders with multiple half-solutions. - There are many pockets of downright strange org structure. Managers managing managers, ICs, and dozens of contractors on one team. Teams in strange departments due to politics. Redundant teams across departments or even within the same department. Title inflation everywhere, numerous lead senior staff principal engineers, few deserving of it, many have to be worked around.

Explore other reviews about Rivian

5.0
1 July 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great learning opportunity, fun work, good people

Cons

Lots of travel if not based in Normal IL. Lot of change from management

3.0
8 July 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

the most amazing EV company and EV cars ON THE PLANET

Cons

abysmal salary for the sales team. high turn over. company is still VERY young. And there are a lot of growing pains. Not real strong middle management team (especially in sales)

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