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Foster + Partners

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Foster + Partners Reviews

3.3

56% would recommend to a friend

(746 total reviews)

Stuart Latham

69% approve of CEO

59% positive business outlook

Foster + Partners has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 746 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Foster + Partners employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Construction, repair and maintenance industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

746 reviews
1.0
4 Jul 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Some cool projects if you get close to them. Project Management is glorified admin that doesn’t leave the department so exposure is zero.

Cons

Where to start. I’ll start with the role. I joined the project management team as an associate. I expected to be managing projects, as the name suggests. But unfortunately the role was paper pushing to justify the salary of the partner who headed up the department. The work we were asked to do rarely left the department and mostly consisted of producing dashboards to present to the partner reporting on the projects. Which were worthless as you did not get close to a project. I could’ve put up with the mind numbing tasks until I found a new role but what I could not and refused to put up with was the openly accepted and encouraged bullying, racism and sexism. If you could imagine working in an office environment in the 50’s; rapidly ageing suited white men with egos as big as their combovers calling all women ‘secretaries’ and mocking anyone whose first language was not English. I say this acknowledging that it comes from a place of privilege, it’s something I’ve ever experienced before and am staggered still goes on in a company with such a world renowned reputation. I could go on, but in essence. Your mental health, morals and overall wellbeing is not worth it. Run, run as fast as you can.

2.0
22 Feb 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great projects, great city to be exposed to. High profile clients, designers and consultants. Beautiful office space to work in. You can get any job after this, and can get into any grad school you want.

Cons

Extreme hours, horrible work environment, people tend to be mean spirited and beaten down due to workload and hours. Very little mobility within the office, very hierarchical, Norman Foster is god. Once you are in the door, very difficult to get pay raises, you have to threaten leaving. You can't choose projects you are working on, even if you have experience on said project. Partners tend to be very egotistical and will expect/make you work extremely late nights (1am-4am) and weekends. Worked there for a number of years, probably only had 10-15 weekends to myself

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Foster + Partners Response
10y
Many thanks for sharing your views. Project work is extremely demanding as you say and the Practice is always striving for best in class. We have a good track record of moving our talent around the world on various projects and will take your comments on board.
1.0
1 Jan 2023

A Shame

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You will learn a lot on how to play the game: how to pretend like you have values, when you don’t, how to bully people in a legal way etc etc

Cons

In 5 years, I have seen the change and it’s drastic. HR will bully you until you quit if you say anything, they will make sure you understand they think you are a problem. Management is zero, full of incompetent people that rise to their positions by bullying others and driving away talented people. Promotions happen if you become friends with the right people, not because you do the right work. Not to speak about the show of FP declarations on how we stand with the human rights, and we distance ourselves from Saudi Projects following what happened with Jamal Khashoggi. What happened was Norman Foster distanced himself, the company actually increased their number of Saudi projects. They will force you to work in a project with a client that would condemned you to death, and don’t even try to raise this to HR. I’ve seen it making sure you should just work and shut up. Be ready for over hours (unpaid of course), because management is zero. If you try to bring some level of management, you will be crushed. Your job is to be a yes-person, not being new ideas or creativity. Creative and competent people will be bullied until they leave. Gender pay gap has been increasing since 2017. If you are a woman, and foreigner, get ready to be paid way way less than your male colleagues for the same job. It’s a shame FP became this, but the rain always falls from above.

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Foster + Partners Response
3y
Thank you for taking the time to review. I'm very sad to read your thoughts and would welcome the opportunity to discuss further. Please do reach out to us. Whilst writing my I please refer you to the latest gender pay gap which does show improvement over the years. Very happy to explain and go through the stats.
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Glassdoor has 832 Foster + Partners reviews submitted anonymously by Foster + Partners employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Foster + Partners is right for you.