Pros
The pay is competitive and benefits are excellent. The projects and work are interesting. Having many offices allow staying with the company when moving to another geographic area. Telecommuting is commmon. Office facilities are genrally very good.
Cons
The company expects a lot of free side work in the form of presentations, mentoring, community service projects, etc. Billing is expected to be 100%. Poor support for attending training and professional development events. There is no way to settle disagreeements between project managers and technical experts. The corporate culture fosters blaming and backstabbing rather than collaboration and problem solving. As in many large engineering firms, the environmental division is a sideshow to support the engineering practice. Work is stovepiped with poor communicaitons and cooperation. Long-time employees say it has grown quickly through acquisitions but still operates like a small local office. Individuals market their services internally to project managers with little coordination or support. Records and document retreival infrastructure is very poor. Bonus pay is not common. Managers must rate at least 15 percent of employess as unsatisfactory. Workloads are uneven and vacation/sick leave must be saved to carry through light work periods. Orientaiton and integration is poor without clear explanations of expectations.
