Disorganized, chaos, too much waste, lots of bureaucracy. - Manager United Airlines Employee Review

1.0
Feb 18, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits are ok. (good 401k , 4 %, dollar to dollar up to 100%) Very diverse company. Lots of applications/systems to work on. HQ in Willis Tower (if that is a Pro for you) Travel benefits (if you are very very flexible , since its a stand by) Airline industry could be exciting. I enjoyed working with the people on my projects.

Cons

Exaggerated flight benefits (after the merger, its just crazy getting a seat on a standby especially with so many people working there for 10 + years, they are always in front of you in the standby line). Also with decreased capacity its very hard to get a seat on standby. During holidays and weekends, forget it. Pay is way below the market since they show travel benefits as a monetary benefit. Funny thing is they talk about free travel benefits but they give you only 2 weeks vacation. You get 3 weeks after 5 yrs. Not much room to grow, there are too many directors and sr managers. Less people to do the real job. Too many contractors who has been in the company for many years and have zero interest to perform the job. They think they are indispensable and the management treats them like one. For a company of that size, they are very disorganized, chaos in the projects they work on. They just cant get anything done without spending too much money. No wonder they rarely beat Delta or other airlines and always last in customer service and on time ratings. Merit increases are discretionary.

Explore other reviews about United Airlines

5.0
Jul 12, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

management cares about employees well being.

Cons

Hard to grow if you don't want to move to Chicago

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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