It is no secret that Rivian, the electric vehicle company in Normal, has had a bit of a tough time the last few months. Last week, their COO stepped down not long after the company announced that they were going to be 200 units short of their 1,200-unit goal, set by the end of 2021. Rivian stocks went public on November 10, 2021, at a price of $106.75 and have fallen to $79.95 at the time of this writing. Living in the area, I’ve heard plenty of rumors about what is happening on the Rivian production floor. Honestly, I’d be shocked if our average reader hasn’t heard some of the same rumors. This week, I was given the go-ahead to search out current and former employees of Rivian and compare their experiences.

Quick note to our readers: sourcing contacts can be tough on any given story. It is especially tough to get a person to talk about their experiences working at a large company with a strict Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). The major commonality among those I spoke with was “I do not want to violate my NDA”, so, I will obscure their identities for this article. I should also note that, as neutral as I may be, most contacts are not neutral. With a deadline looming, sometimes a reporter has to quit worrying about neutrality and just report.

With that in mind, I give you J, H, and T. 

J is a man who was employed with Rivian for about 6 months before voluntarily leaving and going back to the company he was formerly working for. He declined to tell me exactly what he worked on at Rivian, except to say that he worked on the production floor. J was very clear to me that he felt that 12-hour days were “killing him” and that he felt that he wasn’t given much of an opportunity to have a life outside of Rivian.

H mirrored what J had said, while also providing a bit more insight. H went on record with me, saying that Rivian felt “cult-like” surrounding Rivian’s founder, Robert RJ Scaringe. H compared his time at Rivian with his time working with a small family-owned construction firm near Bloomington-Normal, whose workings were based on a patriarchal structure. He described a company whose owner had a near mythological status; based off hard work, know how, and networking. H eventually decided that that environment was not for him, and he left of his own accord also. When H arrived at Rivian, he knew that the environment he was working in probably wasn’t for him, on account of the culture feeling too much like what he had experienced previously. He lasted 3 months and then went his own way. H is currently welding for a living at a nearby company.

That brings us to T. Full disclosure, I have worked with T for about a year at a company that we have both since left. Pre-Covid, T and I worked together as a part of a 3-person team who worked four 12-hour shifts Monday-Thursday. T is an incredibly smart person on top of being a hell of a worker. T and I started our conversation by talking about how Covid has changed our lives. T has a bit of a complicated family situation and was adamant in pointing out that Rivian respected that. To make that point, he told me about how his schedule is about to change: One week is 3 12-hour shifts, followed by 4 12-hour shifts the next week. T made sure to tell me that there was plenty of overtime available. I took this opportunity to ask T about a “cult like” culture within Rivian. While T acknowledged that there are “Dress like RJ” Fridays, he assured me that those days were a large joke meant to poke fun at a business owner worth “tons of money” who dresses largely in flannel. The main thing that T told me is “this is a retirement company”. He also mentioned that Rivian has some 1,900 job openings at this time and suggested that my resume may go to the top of a certain pile if I wanted it to. Whether my resume goes anywhere is up for grabs, but T is right about the amount of job openings. There are just under 1,900 available at the time of this writing. 230 are available at the Normal facility.

At the end of the day, Rivian is a company making their way in a competitive market. The trajectory of the company may be worthy of a bet; however, it would be silly for central Illinois to look too critically at a gift horse.