Performative Culture: Limited Growth - Global Responsibilities: Local Warehouse Mentality - Manager Royal Caribbean Group Employee Review

Leadership is cliquish, disconnected, and operates with very little trust in its employees. Career growth is largely nonexistent despite frequent messaging about development and opportunity. Recognition is performative and superficial. Public praise, appreciation events, and cakes mean very little when employees are consistently overlooked for advancement, underpaid, and expected to take on more responsibility without meaningful support or adequate compensation. The culture often feels driven by favoritism rather than merit. Promotions and opportunities do not consistently appear to go to the most qualified people, creating the perception that relationships, visibility, and fitting into the existing leadership circle are valued more than experience, expertise, and results. This makes it difficult to believe advancement is based on performance. Middle managers are expected to support shipboard operations 24/7, often working nights, weekends, while traveling, and even during time off. None of those countless after-hours are tracked or acknowledged. Instead, leadership closely monitors turnstile reports and badge swipes to ensure employees spend enough time in the office. Employees are treated as though physical presence matters more than outcomes, despite the reality of supporting a global operation around the clock. The rigid emphasis on everyone arriving and leaving at the same time creates unnecessary congestion. It can easily take more than 30 minutes just to exit the parking garage because of turnstile bottlenecks, compounded by ongoing port construction and heavy traffic. Employees lose valuable personal time every day for no operational benefit. A significant amount of time is spent in recurring meetings filled with slides, powerpoint presentations and status updates that add little operational value. It often feels as though these meetings exist to justify layers of management rather than solve problems, remove roadblocks, or support the teams doing the work. The result is less time for execution and more time spent on performative reporting. Compensation is below market for the level of responsibility, micromanagement is common, and there are too many layers of management focused on justifying their own existence rather than enabling their teams. Decision making is slow, trust is in short supply, and talented people leave not because the work isn't interesting, but because the culture is discouraging and unsustainable.