Joining Aspen Environmental Group was my first environmental consulting gig. I had done work in environmental non-profits before this. I was new to writing EIR/EIS documents. The office I joined was one of their smaller offices. Even though I was new to this field, I was given very little support while having a lot of demands placed on me. Within my first month of starting, it became clear that my manager expected me to work on Saturdays. I would come in on Saturdays virtually the entire time I worked at Aspen.
I had high hopes that my hard work and commitment to learning would be rewarded. It was not. Given my consistent dedication (working on Saturdays), I was eagerly awaiting some positive feedback from my supervisor during my first review. They were too busy to really give much praise or even guidance while the work was being done. My first (and only) professional review at Aspen was a very disturbing experience. Not only did my supervisor have nothing positive to say about the work I did, my supervisor proceeded to suggest that they only reason they hired me was because I was a "diversity hire." My supervisor literally used that phrase in my review. The most hurtful thing about all of this is that I am pretty sure they wrote up this review on one of the Saturdays I came into the office.
I managed to last a couple of more months after that even though I felt terrible working here. My supervisor really provided no guidance on how to do any aspects of my job. They would simply say, "Write this section of this report, here's an example." I remember one time going to them with a question and they were palpably irritated.
The reason I left Aspen was because I made a mistake. It was not even a huge mistake. It was not a mistake that would show up in their reports. I forgot to save something on the server and emailed it to the person who needed it instead because we were on a "tight deadline." The next day my supervisor screamed at me for several minutes for everyone to hear. I tried to explain that I emailed it and thought that was better, but the basically treated me like I was a dunce.
I suspect that now, years later, Aspen makes a big deal about how they "value diversity." Do not be fooled. My advice to anyone considering working here is that your efforts will likely be better rewarded at a larger company with a supervisor who will actually try to support your growth.
Ultimately, I am glad I moved on. Does writing reports over projects actually do anything to protect the environment? Do these projects actually ever get built to begin with? Management has such an inflated view of how they are "changing the world." They should work on changing themselves.
