Vantaggi
Stability. There were no layoffs during COVID and the company has never had layoffs. There are more "Lifers" than any business I've ever worked at. I had many colleagues with 20+ years experience at Expeditors that had never worked at another employer. This meant interpersonal relationships were really strong, some people have spent their whole careers working together. In a business full of red tape and bureaucracy, these interpersonal relationships are really valuable. The company has a very strong preference for growing-from-within, allowing a lot of flexibility for workers that want to move laterally into another organization. This was my key motivation for joining the company. My plan was to join the organization and use this culture of lateral movement to transition from one field of technical work to a different type of technical work. I was successful in achieving this goal and Expeditors made it pretty easy to do that. Employee Stock Program is pretty good, the stock soared under COVID and the workers who held stock made out pretty well.
Svantaggi
Senior Leadership has hated Work From Home and tried over and over to remove this health and safety benefit. Leadership was trying to bring people back May of 2020, July 2020, September 2020, November 2020, February 2021, April 2021, June 2021, July 2021, August 2021, September 2021, and finally forced everyone back into office October 2021, causing an exodus of workers with immuno-compromised family, myself included. There was a salary freeze under COVID, but there was no pause in stock payouts for Senior Leadership. They are hardcore capitalists and have personally accrued massive wealth during the pandemic. Worker forums were shut down. There is no feedback loop to take worker feedback into consideration when making decisions about COVID policy. "Open Door Policy" is a ploy to stop collective action by putting workers exclusively into 1:1 conversations with their manager. This same manager determines that workers salary, benefits, bonus, and career prospects. This shuts down the communication from worker to leadership. Workers never received more than 2-week notice about policy changes around working from home. The duration was spent with the unavoidable forced return looming just 2-weeks to a month out. Meanwhile, senior leadership figures relocated to Texas, Hawai'i, California, and took Zoom calls from their boats. A shameful disconnect from workers struggling with the realities of life in COVID. Expeditors does not try to compete on quality of life for their workers. Expeditors does not try to compete on salary for technical workers. Leadership does not believe in a remote workforce and instead prefers cubicle drones, even though this remote workforce ran the company during the largest period of profit and growth in history. The company prefers to grow-from-within, which offers flexibility and career path options internally, but severely limits knowledge in new fields. If a whole team has 10+ years at Expeditors, no one on that team has worked in any modern environments. They do not headhunt top talent from other businesses when they find the team lacking certain skills, strongly preferring "Do It Yourself" efforts. They are the slowest adopters of new technology of any company I have ever worked for. The company is deeply skeptical of new technology and is only now experimenting with practices considered standard in 2010. The company is on the far right of the technology adoption curve. They are laggards. This is not a place to work if you are an innovator that expects other people to innovate. If you are at the top of your field, avoid Expeditors entirely. Middle-management holds no real power to influence those above them. Being a "Yes Man" is the best way to drive career growth. I believe this is because of the emphasis on personal relationships, the career of middle management is anchored to personal opinions of their managers. Upward mobility is driven by these relationships. There are very few women and very few people of color in positions of authority. The dress code is ancient and embarrassing. Being "Men in Suits" worked for leadership in the 80's but is archaic in 2021. Workers had to sit at their desks in a necktie right up until 2021. Removing this requirement was meant to seem a huge concession to the workers. Something to be celebrated. Leadership removed the requirement for neckties at the same time they pulled everyone back in full-time. An empty gesture. A clear reminder that leadership will give as little as they possibly can in every situation. My first manager was completely incapable of helping me to improve as a technical professional. All of our 1:1 conversations were about the color of my socks, rather than the quality of my work. He was very concerned about his team developing a reputation for being lax about the dress code. He was not at all concerned about the team pursuing excellence. He regularly flew to India to get custom suits. If a management position is open, the workers under that manager are not interviewed or consulted. Managers are installed by fiat. There is no negotiation. One day you will arrive at work and your boss will be a stranger. You will not be warned. Their loyalty is not to you. If this company ran a government, it would be a Feudal Monarchy. Proximity to the king is the only quality that determines success.