You can't trust upper management - Cubicle Dweller Black & Veatch Employee Review

3.0
Jul 26, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The HR people who monitor this page and post chirpy replies wishing people well in their careers and completely ignoring the valid concerns that are brought up can skip this one, because I don't trust them anymore than I trust Mario and company and I don't care for their patronizing tone or insincere best wishes. If you're looking for a company that offers good benefits, Black & Veatch has some things to offer, such as good health insurance, a decent ESOP plan, and support for progressive stuff like DEI initiatives and renewable/green energy. Just be aware that if you go to work for them, you're going on a train ride called Feed Mario's Ego. After three years of people working full-time remotely, and after the previous CEO retired having said remote work was the future, we were dragged back to the office three days a week because "everybody" had purportedly said in "surveys" which were, of course, unavailable to show anyone, that "everybody" wanted to work from the office again. Hijinks ensued, including Bluetooth tracking devices to make sure people were really coming in three days a week and staying for a full work day. When employees complained about feeling like microchipped house pets, upper management couldn't have cared less. They only backed down on this issue when it became obvious that the trackers could not give them the information they wanted. Since the trackers were retrieved several months ago, the company has launched a vanity initiative to build a brand new headquarters that seems to be mainly a monument to someone's ego, not specifying whose, but that person stated in an employee Town Hall a few days ago that not only did he feel that we should be giving the company more than 40 hours a week, but that "many" employees feel that we should come back to the office 5 days a week because it is so effective to "collaborate" with project teams who are located, in a significant percentage of cases, in far flung locales, which means everyone is driving to the office and then jumping on Microsoft Teams, which could be just as easily done from home. You know, like we did for three years. But hey, what do I know.

Cons

Refer to the previous paragraph.

Explore other reviews about Black & Veatch

5.0
Jul 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great culture, flexibility, benefits and pay.

Cons

I do not have any. Great place to work.

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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