Pros
There were a number of things that I enjoyed while working at Arrive. Everyone would agree that free catered lunch on Fridays is great, 9 times out of 10 the food is delicious, definitely is a nice way to end the week. Recreationally, the two parties they had (the Anniversary party in the summer and holiday party) were an absolute blast; people here know how to have fun both in the office and out. I definitely made a number of friends while working here. Personally, I had two engaging and awesome managers. They cared about how I was doing and were always available to help me when I had questions or for advice; I feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with them in my first post-grad job. For someone looking to go into sales as a first job, working here isn’t a bad option and I have no regrets about accepting this offer, but based on my experience, I wouldn’t recommend this as a long-term career choice, although it is fitting for some people.
Cons
In hindsight, I think the training I received was terrible. While I was in training the first 6-8 weeks I didn’t know what to think being I was fresh out of college and new to the industry, but it was all just so basic. They taught us basic terminology and things we used every day, sure. But there was so much that I didn’t learn until I was on the floor with my mentor and even on my own which is essential to the job. I know that they structure their training program the best that they can, I just think that it is flawed, at least the training I experienced, I would like to think things are better now on that front. This definitely doesn’t represent the employees as a whole, but there are a number of unprofessional people that work at Arrive. It is very normal to hear swearing and yelling and reps from all sides i.e. Customer/BDR’s, Operations, and Carrier lash out at who they are moving freight with, especially over email and gchat/slack. I understand and can relate to the fact that logistics can get very stressful and will bring out all kinds of high and low emotions, but for how often explosive behavior happened, I would note this experience as a con. Additionally, the road to Senior Management is very heavily nepotistic. There are multiple Senior Managers and a few “Directors” that have no business holding leadership positions. Many of them came from Command Transportation, where the co-founders began their careers, so the people that came over clearly had better cards to play with when they got their foot in the door. A senior manager in my office was very simple-minded (also from Command). I’m sure he was a good sales rep, but to put it bluntly, his model of leadership was very immature. All he did was run around the office in the morning and yell to try to hype people up. He wasn’t very helpful and was very quick to blame on factors that were out of reps’ control, and honestly, I think he’s an idiot. The workday is exhausting, but since logistics are the backbone of the economy, that’s just the way it is. Eventually, I got used to the 7-5 schedule, but it led me to have little to no energy to do much after work and definitely took a toll on my overall health. It doesn’t help that there is an unspoken rule that you can’t take a legitimate lunch break. You will be questioned as to why you were gone or inactive for more than 15-20 min. If you value a work-life balance, this is not the career for you, however, there are definitely disciplined ways to make it work, I just didn’t have enough time to find it.
