SENIOR EXEC WHISTLEBLOWER - Senior Executive United Airlines Employee Review

1.0
Jan 5, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The hope that United will once again be the airline that passengers want to fly, employees want to work for and shareholders want to own.

Cons

Unfortunately United Airlines senior management has no concern for passengers, shareholders or employees. Their one focus has been to complete a merger with another airline. This merger will benefit no one - not passengers, not employees, nor shareholders - only Glenn Tilton and a few at the top that will stand to walk away with millions. Most recently they are cutting back routes, planes and employees to size the airline appropriately for a merger with Continental Airlines. This is being done ahead of the merger so that all the cuts will be complete when the merger plan is presented to the justice department. United Airlines will then tell the justice department that there will be no employee cutbacks due to a merger with Continental. They will have already been done. Additionally, many of the jobs - mechanics, customer service, pilots have been outsourced to an extraordinary degree, partly to be used as a bargaining chip when contract negotiations take place. United Airlines senior management has a particular disdain for it's employees, startlingIy even beyond pure business dealings and to a personal level.

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5.0
Jun 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

great lean team, excellent flexibility in terms of creative opportunity

Cons

very fast-paced and continous changes due to industry type

3.0
Apr 22, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

United is genuinely a good place to work in a lot of ways. The dev side has strong leadership, the work is interesting, and there are real engineers doing real things. When I started, I was proud to tell people where I worked.

Cons

The Quality Engineering org has gone downhill fast since the leadership change about two years ago. It's hard to overstate how much the culture has shifted. The focus now is almost entirely on offshoring roles to India, and the US team has been quietly squeezed—people being nudged toward retirement, others suddenly finding themselves with negative performance feedback after years of solid work. It doesn't feel issue-driven, it feels like a headcount strategy with a polite cover story. On top of that, we spent most of last year implementing process changes that look impressive in a slide deck but don't actually move the needle. Meanwhile, the QE org has drifted away from what the dev leadership is actually trying to build. We're solving problems no one asked us to solve while the real priorities sit on the side. It's frustrating to watch, especially when you know what this team used to be capable of. The day-to-day environment has gotten noticeably toxic. People are checked out, the good ones are looking, and there's a real sense that institutional knowledge is being treated as disposable.

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