Excellent benefits and work environment; weird culture - Senior Manager Cox Automotive Employee Review

4.0
10 Jan 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

For the rank and file, you can't beat the benefits, the work from home policies, the work-life balance, or the overall empathy of leadership within the IT organization. This is not a company that puts developers into a boiler room and expects them to work 60+ hours a week. Hard work is expected and rewarded, but crazy heroics are not usually expected unless something is metaphorically on fire. The culture encourages collaboration, experimentation and innovation in the day-to-day.

Cons

The engineering culture is pretty weird; while the delivery model is agile, there is still quite a bit of top-down control and not a lot of ownership from teams, which has the effect you might expect on teams' sense of ownership of their product and ownership of quality. Quite a bit of churn in upper management ranks, and possibly the poorest change management / communication I've ever seen in 20 years in the industry. This is also a company that values the hands-on tactical far more than the strategic - very focused on getting stuff out the door, but not nearly enough focus on what the right things might actually be. Coding skills are valued above all else - if you're not a coder, you won't progress, and the organization has a hard time recognizing and handling 'people issues' and process issues. Until leadership gets a more balanced view of what's important and who their stakeholders are, things are going to stay weird.

Explore other reviews about Cox Automotive

5.0
7 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great work life balance, unlimited pto

Cons

No real concept of a promotion. All mobility is done through application and interviewing.

1.0
26 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits are good. PTO Day 1.

Cons

No advancement opportunity. They claim they hire internally, but they don't seem to adhere to that. Out of nowhere, hours were cut from 40 hours to 32 for our particular shift due to "business needs". However it seems like we are rarely caught up at the end of the night. The same position on another shift did not lose nearly as many hours. Then, there was a location wide meeting where they bragged about record sales and record profits. Seems pretty insensitive to do in front of employees who lost over 20% of their pay. The manager comes off as completely harsh and rude. When you fill out a survey stating facts, they are met with a dismissive tone followed by, "you know this is not true". Training is non existent. Other underpaid employees have to train you so it's like a game of telephone where the training contains just a little less information or a little more incorrect information each time. Pay for other positions in the organization is below average. When applying for those positions internally, they want to base pay on your current role instead of based on qualifications for the job being offered. There is a pay range listed for jobs, don't expect to get anywhere near the top and you are LUCKY to see the middle of that range. Pay raises are not anywhere near inflation rates, so if you stay more than a year you are losing money.

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