Fake Kindness Confused for Culture - Senior Manager Southwest Airlines Employee Review

Tenure valued over competency Hired for “fun loving attitude” over ability to do the job/be a top performer Underperforming senior leaders are not held accountable Critical feedback goes seemingly unnoticed and unactioned Typical to have 3-4 Directors per year Senior Leaders are treated as generalists and given responsibility in areas for which they are unqualified and often disinterested Focus on fun leads to organizational laziness and mediocre performance Low performers are passed along versus being performance managed The morale of the headquarters facility is very low with the exception of the college hires No growth path for HiPo talent and no retention strategy Large scale organizational changes are frequent, communicated poorly and generally unsuccessful People pretend to like one another and use that to promote “a world class culture.” Its no different than anywhere else. The politics, while present in all organizations, are especially rampant here Roles are often changed without consulting the affected employees in advance. Different pay scales for the same role exist throughout the company. Often times a decrease in pay must be accepted in order to make a lateral move to a different area Preselection of candidates is the norm yet full interview processes take place wasting the time and energy of candidates. Word gets out frequently about who has gotten a role before the job itself has even been posted Spans and layers are wildly different. Managers running director level scope and vice versa is not uncommon (spans and layers issue)