Good Fit for Very Few People - Recensione dipendente - Project Engineer presso Pape-Dawson

Not a place for a long term career. Expect to only learn in one "field" (i.e. commercial, residential, water resources, etc.). It is almost impossible to switch teams and learn new things. This is regardless of your work ethic. It's almost easier to do a bad job and get kicked off on to another team. Expect to put in 45 hours minimum regardless of how efficiently you complete tasks. Realistically expect to be pushed towards 50 hours. If you finish your work in 40 hours, expect to get more work to ensure you have to put in more hours. Be ready to play office politics if you want to progress in any meaningful manner. Even then don't expect promotions based on your work quality and quantity. Promotions are almost exclusively based on years of service, unless you know someone who knows one of the officers or owners. If you don't believe this and end up interviewing there, take a look at all the people with offices vs cubicles and take note of the age gap. To their benefit, titles don't mean anything as you are expected to do anything the PM or VP asks. If your teammate goofs off, you are expected to pick up the their slack. You yearly raise will not reflect much unless you go fight for it or threaten to leave. Your first 2-3 years will be 60% paper work, 40% actual design work at best. This is heavily dependent on the team you are assigned to. Very few teams break from this norm. Very traditional mentality, just to list a few things: no music (even with headphones), phone should not be seen unless during breaks (strictly 10-10:15 and 3-3:15), 8:01 is considered late (they will take note and use it during performance review). I only lasted over 3 years because my own goals (getting a PE) aligned with the working there just long enough for me to tough it out. Now that I am at a new place I realize how much I underestimated the scale of how bad that place is for your overall health. They do a great job of selling you the family oriented persona, but it is only surface deep. At the end of the day profits and deadlines drive everything regardless of the your personal stress. Parting words: Take the positive reviews with a grain of salt. Around mid-2016 they started a glassdoor "review push". Employees were selected in small batches to sporadically post positive reviews with thinly veiled threats of repercussion if they didn't comply. Take a note of the trend of positive reviews, especially those listing no "Cons". The place is either heaven or those reviews were somewhat dishonest, you decide.