Pros
If you asked me about the pros years ago when I joined, the list would have been incredibly long, but this place took a bit of a nosedive this year. As other reviews mention, the individual contributors and teammates at the project level are fantastic, I worked with some of the most talented people across disciplines on a number of projects during my time and had a lot of positive experiences here. Ask pretty much anyone during interviews what their favorite part of working there was, and chances are, their answer would be about the people. I'll also mention a second possible pro, because maybe it still is one, but there's some big name clients you (might) get to work on, but this dipped in the last year or so since the acquisition and the market has fluctuated. They've taken on whatever projects they can in this economic climate, and a big chunk of the projects now are internal (Telus) which is not nearly as exciting as a big name. And, because it's the parent company, it's a lot more pressure and not "protected" from toxic client behavior like other projects may be.
Cons
Trust hasn't been rebuilt since the layoffs this year and leadership does not instill confidence down to the team level. Communication regarding layoffs was extraordinarily poor and turned into a presentation full of buzzwords about how AI and voice are the future (don't forget to write your mandated book review since every employee was gifted a copy!) There's a lot of conversation happening privately among employees that used to be a lot more open because everyone continues to fear for their job safety. Rather than confidently making a decision on behalf of the company and properly communicating it, a slack poll was also sent out shortly after the layoffs by the CEO to see what services people would be open to cutting which as one might expect, imploded in on itself and didn't exactly make leadership look like they could confidently make a decision. Budget "planning" happens at the last minute, if at all. Communication around the business doing well and then weeks or days later, promotions are postponed and salary increases are suspended. Every year in December, there's a push to make it more "billable" but rather than properly plan knowing that it will be a slow month with clients and PTO, they put pressure on the teams to just "take less PTO" going so far as to ask people to change holiday plans and cancel PTO if it exceeded a certain amount. Lots of statements about how in person collaboration is important and how valuable it is to get teams together (even has it on the website that remote on-sites are quarterly) but there hasn't been one for well over a year, and the last two were cancelled at the last minute. Most, if not all, teams are cross located so be prepared to sit in virtual calls all day long while forced into the office. Leadership also sees being full-time remote as a "perk" rather than a working style. Claims that you can switch between office and remote anytime, but pretty quickly changed their tune on that one making it for senior level folks only (but who will be mentoring junior team members who remain in office?) and a lengthy approval process to transfer with a majority of requests getting denied. Sales team will regularly make promises and contracts that cannot be completed on time or on budget, ultimately leading to blame going on individuals who didn't even vet the proposal in the first place. Teams are overworked or blamed for not doing the work, leading to poorly done products or loss because of the extra investment required. None of the blame is ever put on the people selling this work though, they get their own happy hours and celebrations.
