Exciting industry potential overshadowed by toxic leadership and culture - Anonymous employee USA Rare Earth Employee Review

Unfortunately, my experience was that the internal culture did not live up to the potential of the industry or the company’s mission. The organization felt chaotic, reactive, and poorly communicated across leadership and teams. Priorities often seemed to shift based on board pressure rather than the realities of day-to-day operations, which left employees constantly scrambling to execute against unrealistic expectations. There was a concerning lack of transparency, accountability, and consistency from leadership, particularly within the People and Culture function. In my experience, the Head of People and Culture played a significant role in creating and reinforcing a toxic environment. For a company of this size and complexity, especially one with public visibility and aggressive growth expectations, the level of people leadership did not appear to match what the organization needed. From what I observed, this leadership gap directly contributed to the company’s inability to meet its hiring goals. Hiring protocols and internal standards were not applied consistently. Some teams and hiring managers were expected to follow process, while others, particularly those in leadership or with influence, appeared to receive exceptions. This created an environment where favoritism and nepotism seemed tolerated, and where fairness, structure, and accountability were not consistently modeled by the function responsible for culture and hiring. The company also lacked meaningful diversity in hiring and leadership. In a male-dominated industry, some of the cultural dynamics felt outdated and, at times, misogynistic. I did not leave with confidence that the organization was intentionally building an inclusive, healthy, or people-first workplace. Work-life balance was also poor. An unhealthy level of urgency seemed to be valued and pushed, with extreme production goals and timelines that did not feel grounded in operational reality. Rather than setting realistic goals based on actual business readiness, leadership pressure seemed to cascade downward in a way that created stress, fear, and burnout. Employees beneath the leadership level were often left absorbing the consequences of unrealistic commitments. I also had concerns about the broader safety culture. When production timelines are pushed aggressively without what appears to be realistic planning, communication, or operational grounding, it raises concerns about whether employees and customers are being set up for success. The pressure to meet ambitious production goals often seemed to take priority over building stable, sustainable processes.