Left due toxic leadership - Former Engineer Black & Veatch Employee Review

1.0
May 8, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

My coworkers were incredible - brilliant, kind, resourceful. I enjoyed my clients. The pay was competitive and the benefits were decent. The variety of work made it exciting and never boring - new industries to learn and projects to design.

Cons

The overarching leadership is full of performative rhetoric, touting 'diversity' and 'psychological safety', neither of which are practiced in action. Professionals have submitted qualifying ADA requests with documentation, only to be rejected and subsequently mishandled by HR (blasting requests with specifics across the HR department, which sounds like a major violation of privacy). Now, strange yearly performance goals, which determine raises, were rolled out to require each person to mentor a diverse professional. Note that it says 'mentor', not build a relationship with, as the person of diversity is assumed to be a lower level. While the effort to embrace diversity should be celebrated, neither of these actions actually demonstrate embracing differences or create inclusion, but rather single out and ostracize those that are different. Earlier this year, Azar gave a textbook definition of gaslighting when discussing the RTO yammer threads, laughing off professionals' concerns and turning it into him as the both the victim and hero. Also, career growth is not clear for all positions and red tape during proposals are cumbersome.

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Black & Veatch Response
3y
Thank you for leaving your thoughts. As a B&V professional of over 20 years, you surely encountered decades worth of coworkers, projects, and changes throughout the organization. It would have been amazing to hear some of those stories! You've focused on the things you did not like, which hey, I get it--it's Glassdoor! But you also mentioned that you're waiting for us to dismiss your Cons. We're not going to do that, as those are your personal feelings and you're allowed to have them! All I can say, and I must change this to the pronoun of I, I'm not going to do that. I'm one person responding to you and these are my personal thoughts I'd like to share with you. I haven't been here for 20 years; only one year as of this month. I don't work in HR, am a woman of color, and have felt nothing but psychologically safe here. More so here than any of the companies I've worked for in the past 20 years. Nothing has ever seemed to be done in a performative way, and that's in my diverse, female opinion. It saddens me that you've felt otherwise; it honestly does. I've also had to acclimate to the hybrid way of working; it does take some time to get used to especially after being remote for so long. Everyone is handling it in his or her own way and that's their right to do so; I personally think of different ASPiRE concepts to help me through. Even though I've only been here a fraction of the time you have, I thank you on behalf of the company for so many years of service and wish you the best in your future.

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5.0
Jun 3, 2026
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CEO approval
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Pros

Great team to work with in SCADA

Cons

Nothing to specify.. so far everything is good

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Black & Veatch Response
1mo
Thank you for leaving a review! We appreciate the feedback!
1.0
Jul 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fair starting compensation, the team I lead is very dedicated, the onboarding process is very smooth, there are opportunities to mentor and be mentored.

Cons

The current performance management process is deeply flawed. Leaders collect ratings from managers and supervisors, then gather in a room with peers to “calibrate.” During this meeting, a predetermined percentage of employees must receive low ratings. At one point, someone referred to this as “forced ratings,” and the IT leader became visibly upset, insisting that it was not. However, I was present for the discussion: we lowered ratings, checked the spreadsheet, lowered more ratings, checked the spreadsheet again, and repeated this cycle until we hit the percentage the IT leader said had to be met. From conversations with peers outside of IT, this appears to be a common practice across the organization. Unfortunately, the approach often results in employees receiving ratings that do not accurately reflect their actual performance. These artificially lowered ratings directly affect merit increases and bonuses—even if the bonuses are relatively small—creating consequences that feel at best unfair. Regardless of what label is used, the experience felt undeniably forced.

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